Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE.
The conventional wisdom of this plague doesn’t pass the logic test.
Too fast, too convenient an answer. (Stored and transmitted by rats” is usual answer.)
So, if it came in from China on a ship, how did the virus/plague go from sailor to city to resident to wander/trader between cities to the next city so fast? faster than “rats” can travel.
Sure, people carry it. But then why the rat+flea vector? How the rat+flea vector so quick ?
Too rapid a rise, too great a death rate, and then it “vanishes ....” to negligible levels today.
But in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s ... life was not too much different. Sanitation and rat control was not much different than in the 1400’s.
Sure, today? The plague would be less. But why did it stop? What was it? Two different diseases certainly: one short (air borne? One longer, slower. Flea borne? Maybe.
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE.
During the time of the 1348-1350 outbreak, folks were pretty unhygienic.
It was common to have farm animals living in the same hovel as people. Fleas were just a fact of life..
Plague first came to the United States in the 1850's. The rail companies were importing Chinese Coolies to work on the transcontinental railway.
There was a small plague outbreak in San Francisco's Chinatown district. An alert doctor spotted the outbreak almost immediately, and appealed to the city council to institute a quarantine and rat catching program.
The town fathers refused to believe there was plague in their fair city.
They screwed around long enough for it to infect the local ground squirrel population where there was no hope stopping it from spreading. Thanks to their inaction, one can be exposed to plague anywhere in the western US.
Any parallels one wishes to draw with a more recent "gay plague" are left to the reader as an exercise.
Those who do not learn the lessons of the past...
Ship rat to sailor to prostitute to new john who moves on to a new town--all carrying diseased fleas that leap from one to the next and bite them--is easy for me to imagine. In fact, I'm fairly certain I've read that in different books.
Once thinkers at least figured out that outbreaks typically spread from major ports to the surrounding regions, in-bound ships often had to spend periods off-shore (says, a week or so) and the crew inspected by what passed for physicians from the port city to be sure no-one was showing symptoms of the plague.
If the crew appeared healthy, the ship could enter the port and off-load. If not, crewemen and sometimes whole ships would be quarantined until the danger passed.
