If detected and recognized early and aggressively treated pneumonic
plague caused by Yersinia Pestis can be kept from becoming a pandemic.
Modern medicine can actually treat the plague with great success if caught early and public healyh measures can prevent it’s spread. The key is
early aggressive response. As with bird flu and other respiratory illnesses
that easily transfer via droplet/airborne means people infected and at risk
will have to exercise self control as in wear masks, avoid travel and other acts that some idiots will view as an infringement of rights rather than an
exercise in personal responsibility. Pandemic lebels of illness may require
the imposition of some very unsavory controls to prevent spread.
Such impositions would grant unsavory characters an opportunity to abuse
their powers and trigger resistance to needed protocols in the name of
“Freedom”. Panic, death and destruction could follow.
I once knew a retired doctor from Turkey who in his general practice had treated cases of both smallpox and the plague, although I suppose not in the same person at the same time.