Posted on 03/24/2020 1:22:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Two people in China are being treated for plague, authorities said Tuesday. It's the second time the disease, the same one that caused the Black Death, one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, has been detected in the region -- in May, a Mongolian couple died from bubonic plague after eating the raw kidney of a marmot, a local folk health remedy.
The two recent patients, from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, were diagnosed with pneumonic plague by doctors in the Chinese capital Beijing, according to state media Xinhua. They are now receiving treatment in Beijing's Chaoyang District, and authorities have implemented preventative control measures.
Plague, caused by bacteria and transmitted through flea bites and infected animals, can develop in three different forms. Bubonic plague causes swollen lymph nodes, while septicemic plague infects the blood and pneumonic plague infects the lungs.
Pneumonic -- the kind the Chinese patients have -- is more virulent and damaging. Left untreated, it is always fatal, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
During the Middle Ages, plague outbreaks devastated Europe, killing around 50 million people. Since then, we've invented antibiotics, which can treat most infections if they are caught early enough -- but the plague isn't gone. In fact, it's made a recent comeback.
From 2010 to 2015, more than 3,248 cases were reported worldwide, including 584 deaths, according to the WHO. The three most endemic countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Peru.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
There have been a number of cases within a few miles of me over the years. One death. Usually a pet messes with a dead prairie dog or ground squirrel and brings the fleas home. Doctors here are aware of it and it isn’t usually fatal.
A couple from Santa Fe visiting NYC had it and the doctors there didn’t figure it out until one of them had legs amputated.
“Two People Just Got the Plague in China — Yes, the Black Death Plague (November 2019)”
so what? several people get the plague in Colorado every year when they stupidly let their dogs romp through infected colonies of prairie dogs, plus plague is easily treatable with Streptomycin ...
both CNN and you have totally failed at this new attempt at fostering even more pointless panic and paranoia than already exists ...
That’s bad. I would’ve hoped a genuine MD would’ve figured it out sooner.
Awesome! Marmots are the critters that kicked off the 14th century plague. Let’s all start eating marmots! What could go wrong?
Plague is endemic in a very small way in our own Southwest and America has the largest reservoir of Plague in the world in the immense prairie dog colonies in that region.
Not true. We have it already in America. Lots of fleas among the prairie dogs. Hanta virus which is from fleas also is far more dangerous but rarer and also lives in the Southwest. Curing it is chancy while Plague is eminently curable if one doesn’t wait until dead to get to a medic.
Yes, but the real takeaway should be that “wet markets” that deal in exotic meats are prime vectors for disease. We just witnessed (perhaps) that a persons enjoyment of “bat soup” in Wuhan has caused worldwide death, illness, panic, and cost Western nations trillions of dollars and caused a loss of wealth in the trillions of dollars.
While I am not here to argue the exact vector it is undeniable that these markets can spread disease.
With this in mind, this article illustrates how/why these markets are a very bad idea for a connected world with free and frequent travel when the consumption of such items poses a pandemic risk to a community, state, nation, or world.
These “events” are not new to humanity and localized or regional outbreaks of disease have been far more common than we realize. However, in a world of free and frequent travel unprecedented in human history we are now faced with the real potential that what a person may eat or otherwise expose themselves to in Wuhan can greatly impact people on the opposite side of the globe within months.
This is one of the major downsides to “globalism” as it greatly multiplies the potential spread of disease from an exposed population to an unexposed. We have seen this happen in areas with very high immigration from Central America where diseases that were considered eradicated only a decade ago have suddenly reemerged to a population that was not previously exposed.
People get the plague here too. About a dozen a year.
Brain fart. Hanta virus is from rat droppings,not fleas and there is acase or two of that in the SW every now and then.
Not a problem. I read now and then about plague from those ground rodents; I used to go to eastern WA and shoot them for ranchers trying to control the pests.
Good flipping God. WTF is wrong with people? “Yes, I think I’ll eat raw rodent organs because the tribal shaman says it’s A-OK. Pass the salt, would ya?”
Can be, it's just the really contagious airborne version of the same Plague, found in people who have contracted Plague any old which way. I learned that as a consequence of watching Hawaii 5-0 (the original series).
Oh, man, first they take away my bat soup and now it’s my marmot kidney sashimi. What next?
There are plague cases in our country every year.
300 years ago it was believed it was caused by “bad air”. Bonfires were started all over London to drive the air away. and somehow dogs and cats were blamed and killed. The rats then had a hay day.
When the Great Fire destroyed London, there were still people dying of the plague which started a year before.
Here in SE Arizona, the Plague is carried by animals over the mountain from Mexico almost every year.
Many have caught it in the U.S., too, over the past 20 years. It lives in populations of prairie dogs and some of the other rodents.
Plague is not hard to avoid, BTW, in areas that don’t have many fleas, even if dealing directly with pests like prairie dogs. Hantavirus is worse.
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