Posted on 08/05/2009 10:24:27 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Dog suspected source of China plague: state media
21 mins ago
BEIJING (AFP) – A dog is suspected to be the origin of an outbreak of pneumonic plague in northwest China that has killed three people and left 10,000 under strict quarantine, state media reported.
Ziketan, a remote town in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, has been locked down since Saturday in an effort to contain the spread of the highly virulent disease.
One patient was in critical condition and seven others were infected, most of them relatives of the first fatality, a 32-year-old herdsman, or local doctors, Xinhua news agency said.
Initial tests had shown that the herdsman's dead dog was the likely origin of the outbreak, Xinhua reported late Wednesday, quoting professor Wang Hu, director of the Qinghai disease control bureau.
Wang said it was likely that the dog died after eating a plague-infected marmot and that the man became infected while burying the dead dog. He died three days later.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ping!
WOW.....that many people died from eating just ONE dog? He must have been HUGE. : )
Wouldn’t the marmot be the culprit instead of the dog?
Prayers for all concerned.
“Plague Marmot” just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
How does “Plague Bunny” grab you?
That’s what they call prairie dogs!
I am not sure it would have been fleas. This is the pneumonic variety of the Plague. You get Bubonic Plague from fleas. Pneumonic is transmitted like flu. Handling the dog might well have been the way the man got it. After that sneezing and breathing would have spread it to the others.
As kind of funny but for some reason, Hugh Hefner sprang instantly to mind.
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