CBS New York...Bubonic Plague in NYC???

CBS News NY- channel 2 | 11/6/02 | johnnyjumpstart

[johnnyjumpstart]

As the CBS local News broadcast was signing off to go to the National news at 6:30 tonight ...they announced..."This just in....2 people in New York City hospital with symptoms of BUBONIC PLAUGE"! N0 detail yet.........

[null and void]

Left one looks more like frostbite...

[Franking]

Hanta Virus is an African Plague that will not be likely to be weaponized.

The medical statement on plague is summarized here:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v283n17/ffull/jst90013.html

F

[archy]

Pneumonic---spread by air

Bubonic----spread by blood and fluids.

And the blood can be spread by vectors such as the rat-borne fleas that helped spread the Black Death across Europe [and New Orleans in 1914] to kill a third of the population there in the 1330s. That offers some interesting *Homeland Security* questions about illegal immigrants....

-archy-/-

[Lucas1]

Quote"The city and state health department, were joined by the Centers for Disease Control try in their investigation into how the couple contracted the disease. The state health department in Sante Fe, New Mexico, where the couple lives, tested rodents on their property this summer. Apparently many of those rodents tested positive for the Bubonic plague"

LOL well then DUH...I wonder where they got it??? That whole question pretty much answers itself within that statement.

[stands2reason]

Figures, they're from New Mexico. There's plague there and hantavirus.

[KSCITYBOY]

I sure I've heard of Hanta and the Black Plague showing up in NM over the past serveral years - spread by mouse or rat droppings and inhaled - This is a natual case contracted in NM.

[JRandomFreeper]

There's plague there and hantavirus.

And rattlesnakes, and scorpions, and stinging millipedes, and democrats, and tarantulas, and a bunch of other nasty stuff with a stinger in either it's head or tail.

There is some beautiful vistas though. My favorite painting was inspired by Dog Canyon.

/john

[txhurl]

..get my husband to eat it now. It was easier feeding it to the cat.

Wrap a clove a ball of raw hamburger. Works every time.

Boy, those photos of victims are... black, aren't they.

[JRandomFreeper]

There is some beautiful vistas though.

Object and verb must agree in case and number. "There ARE some beautiful vistas though."

[SierraWasp]

Oh... Don't forget the chipmunks in the CA State Parks!

They propagate like liberals!!!

[archy]

Left one looks more like frostbite...

Source here: [Warning: Not pretty] American School Of Defense/telemedicine.org/BioWar/ Electronic Textbook of Dermatology. [pic at: http://telemedicine.org/BioWar/bw13a.htm ]

-archy-/-

[archy]

Corrected link *here*

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[stands2reason]

Lived there for almost a year---had to leave though, the people were insane. One thing, though, I arrived there a not-to-political middle-of-the-roader and left a staunch conservative.

[archy]

Figures, they're from New Mexico. There's plague there and hantavirus.

And these cute lil' fellas....

[Dave S]

Anyone know if it is contagious?

Its the black death from the middle ages. It wiped out most of Europe at the time. Yes its contagious.

[constitutiongirl]

"But I'm not dead yet."

[Dan Day]

That wasn't plague it was the Hunta Virus you are thinking of;

Hanta. Also sometimes called "Four Corners" disease.

if this is the plague I'll be upset. However, after lastnight the retaliation will be very swift.

No, a few cases of real "plague" happen naturally each year too, as well as the hanta virus. Like rabies, it stays at a low simmer in the animal population, and sometimes hops to humans who have the misfortune of encountering the infected wildlife.

But as others have pointed out, what used to be a decimating killer centuries ago has been tamed by simple antibiotic treatment today. An actual bubonic plague epidemic is high unlikely today thanks to modern medical treatment.

Also interesting is that even before modern science, the black plague was losing deadliness in each of its waves, thanks to the action of, drumroll please, evolution.

And not because people were developing immunity, either -- the plague became weaker over the centuries even when it hit areas (and populations) where it had never been before.

Instead, the plague disease was evolving to be more benign, because the more deadly variants would often kill off a human host before it even had a chance to spread. Thus the more deadly variants often weeded themselves out over time, while the less deadly variants lived longer (as its human host lived longer), had more time to spread, and was more "successful" in reproducing itself than the more deadly variants.

This is classic evolution in action, and over the centuries the plague became more of a symbiote (able to live in hosts long times without killing them) and less of a fast, certain killer.

This is a common trend for many deadly diseases -- if they kill their hosts too quickly, they're less "successful" as a species than if they drift towards a more "can't we all get along" existence.

Comparing it to current events, a bacteria which rapidly kills its host is like a suicide bomber, which usually takes itself out of the gene pool the same time it takes out its host -- and likewise has no future itself.

[BRO68]

And these cute lil' fellas....

That's why I've got the 22-250.

[archy]

Also interesting is that even before modern science, the black plague was losing deadliness in each of its waves, thanks to the action of, drumroll, evolution.

Note that it's also been theorized that the *Black Death* epidemic that eliminated a third of Europe's population may have actually been a double-whammy of both a bubonic plague outbreak combined with an anthrax epidemic. But of course anthrax could never be spread here....

-archy-/-

[WIladyconservative]

But nowadays we know that it's caused by an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in the stomach.

Ya mean like little Tommy Dashle?