[muawiyah]

The theory is the different bugs break into cells the same way.

My own theory is the bugs are particularly fond of antibody type "E" ~ so if you don't have "E", and many people don't (about 2% maybe), they become immune, or they simply starve the bugs to death.

That's just my theory ~

The epidemiologists are probably jumping on top of this one since the implication is there is now a very resilient flea that can make it from Afghanistan to North Africa, and then spread the infection to local fleas.

This could attack most of the world if that's the case!

[shoutingandpointing]

Interesting and informative reading, from least to most academic:

http://www.geotimes.org/may07/article.html?id=feature_plague.html

http://www.demosmedpub.com/files/BubonicPlagueExcerpt.pdf

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/283/17/2281

The sky is NOT falling, but it is up there.

[Ancesthntr]

The epidemiologists are probably jumping on top of this one since the implication is there is now a very resilient flea that can make it from Afghanistan to North Africa, and then spread the infection to local fleas.

I know that airplane food is pretty bad, but even so I'd expect that your average flea could probably survive a flight, even if there was a stopover or two along the way.