China's northern region of Inner Mongolia reported two cases of bubonic plague on Saturday, following a previous infection that was detected on Aug. 7, the local government said.
I mean the main reason it was so deadly, apart from lack of medical knowledge and access to antibiotics, is that Europe had enormous numbers of people crammed into cities with no sanitation and no pest control. We don’t live like that anymore so cases don’t spread. The black plague was a disease of its time.
Modern plagues like covid take advantage of how we constantly move people around the world and within countries, which is a different challenge.
Pneumonic plague absolutely could spread quite well if it didn’t kill you in two days like it does now. Thankfully it seems happy sticking to rodents. If we were really going to see an outbreak of a variant of it that spreads better, I’d expect it to come from Madagascar where plague is quite a problem. Over 200 died in an outbreak in 2017.
Wow that is pretty scary. But yeah, things like how quickly it kills are part of the equation - covid made it across oceans and around within continents by being stealthy on the journey and waiting a while before symptoms appear.
You say that, but have you seen the enormous homeless camps in Los Angeles and San Francisco? We’re talking about thousands of people without sanitation, clean water, shelter, food or even the ability to wash themselves or their clothes. It’s really bad and probably on par with 10th century Europe as far as living conditions, although many of these people are worse off because they lack the ability to take care of themselves and many of them are drug addicts.
Yeah, that’s bad, and I imagine if bubonic plague broke out in that one area it could be devastating. It’s not the norm across any large portion of society so we won’t see a larger outbreak of it.
That’s not to say those people don’t matter. It’s a systemic failure of the highest order that people aren’t housed and don’t have access to healthcare, it’s just they don’t create the conditions for a pandemic of that kind. We understand the disease vector now and we have largely eliminated it.
Having these people be homeless in awful conditions is entirely a choice made by the wealthy californians. One that can be remedied in months if the harm to their health becomes larger than the utility of being able to use them as a political pawn. They can also be supplied antibiotics and flea/rodent control tools for a few dollars per capita.
I mean the main reason it was so deadly, apart from lack of medical knowledge and access to antibiotics, is that Europe had enormous numbers of people crammed into cities with no sanitation and no pest control. We don’t live like that anymore so cases don’t spread. The black plague was a disease of its time.
Modern plagues like covid take advantage of how we constantly move people around the world and within countries, which is a different challenge.
Pneumonic plague absolutely could spread quite well if it didn’t kill you in two days like it does now. Thankfully it seems happy sticking to rodents. If we were really going to see an outbreak of a variant of it that spreads better, I’d expect it to come from Madagascar where plague is quite a problem. Over 200 died in an outbreak in 2017.
Wow that is pretty scary. But yeah, things like how quickly it kills are part of the equation - covid made it across oceans and around within continents by being stealthy on the journey and waiting a while before symptoms appear.
You say that, but have you seen the enormous homeless camps in Los Angeles and San Francisco? We’re talking about thousands of people without sanitation, clean water, shelter, food or even the ability to wash themselves or their clothes. It’s really bad and probably on par with 10th century Europe as far as living conditions, although many of these people are worse off because they lack the ability to take care of themselves and many of them are drug addicts.
Yeah, that’s bad, and I imagine if bubonic plague broke out in that one area it could be devastating. It’s not the norm across any large portion of society so we won’t see a larger outbreak of it.
That’s not to say those people don’t matter. It’s a systemic failure of the highest order that people aren’t housed and don’t have access to healthcare, it’s just they don’t create the conditions for a pandemic of that kind. We understand the disease vector now and we have largely eliminated it.
Having these people be homeless in awful conditions is entirely a choice made by the wealthy californians. One that can be remedied in months if the harm to their health becomes larger than the utility of being able to use them as a political pawn. They can also be supplied antibiotics and flea/rodent control tools for a few dollars per capita.