Posted on 02/12/2024 7:16:17 PM PST by nickcarraway
The first case of a deadly bubonic plague in eight years in the US state of Oregon is believed to have come from a cat. According to health officer Richard Fawcett, the patient got "very sick" after catching the disease from her pet.
The illness starts as something that seems like the flu with symptoms such as tiredness and a headache, but in this case, it led to an unusual abscess known as a "bubo". The good news is that antibiotics can successfully treat the bubonic plague if caught early enough.
The woman is now believed to be in recovery and early treatments have been given to those around her to stop any further spread. How the cat passed the infection to its owner has not been noted by officials yet. However, the cat may have carried fleas infected with the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, or the owner may have come into contact with contaminated fluids from her pet.
Bubonic plague warning
Y. pestis typically impacts small mammals and their fleas and can cause different forms of plague depending on how the person contracts it. The most common form is the bubonic plague, which impacts the lymphatic system and can lead to painful sores.
The infection can spread to the lungs, as seen in a patient in Oregon who started coughing while in hospital. This could indicate that their condition was worsening. The plague first arrived in the US in the early 20th century via rats on ships.
The last major city outbreak of the plague ended in 1925, but the bacteria found a home in rural rodents, causing occasional outbreaks outside of big cities. Today, most cases in the US occur in rural areas of the midwest and northwest, with an average of seven cases reported each year.
The last case in Oregon was in 2015 when a girl got infected during a hunting trip and ended up in intensive care. There have been no deaths from the plague in the state for many years. Outside of the US, the plague is found on every continent except Oceania. The disease regularly occurs in places with resident animal reservoirs and overlapping human populations, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Peru.
During severe outbreaks, this disease can claim hundreds of lives. However, compared to the Black Death in Europe during the 15th century or the outbreak in China and India in the 19th century that killed millions, the bubonic plague isn't as deadly as it once was. Despite this, due to its notorious past, a single case in the US can still make headlines, even if the patient is successfully treated and the disease is prevented from spreading.
Yep. Parasites.
Fun facts: lice are species specific. Human head lice feed only on humans, so can only spread plague by first being infected by a human. So lice can’t start a plague epidemic on their own.
And bed bugs have been around for thousands of years and have never been known to transmit any disease to humans ever.
Rodents and fleas however are noth famous for being noxious spreaders of disease, especially yersinia pestis.
Bubonic plague comes from rats, not cats.
BYW, ours isn't the only Deep State with a mad-on for cats.
Recently appeared in the UK's Daily Mail, on the so-called Alaskapox...
A refined model of how Yersinia pestis produces a transmissible infection in its flea vector
Ick.
Hmmmmm....
From 1998...
Naturally Occurring Orthopoxviruses: Potential for Recombination with Vaccine Vectors
Conspiracy theory...
...or spoiler?
When I was young we had a farm in NE New Mexico. We left there in 1052. On a visit back in 1985 I noticed the place had been taken over by Prairie Dogs.
A few years later I noticed a plague warning on a map right over that spot.
From what I have read in the past, the Americas were plague free until Chinese were brought in for laborers. When plague broke out in China Town in San Francisco the City Fathers refused to do anything about it and allowed it to spread.
The good news is it wasn’t the pneumonic form of it.
Because they don’t. Not every insect can be a vector.
US kiities are far mor likely to get plague from the rodents they hunt than from a dog.
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