It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A teen girl from eastern Oregon has contracted the bubonic plague, health officials said.
The Crook County girl is believed to have acquired the disease from a flea bite during a hunting trip near Heppner in Morrow County, officials said. The trip started on Oct. 16, she fell ill five days later and was hospitalized three days afterward.
The girl is recovering at a hospital intensive care unit. Her condition isn't known.
Plague, in humans, doesn't pop up a lot. Generally there are between one and seventeen cases per year in the United States, and only about a thousand in total since 1900. Anyone of any age can get contract the infection, but probability of exposure increases with outdoor activity. Lie down with small mammals, get up with plague.
People who want to minimize their possibility can go snow-camping, or camping during the coldest part of the winter -- although getting the plague may seem the more pleasurable option. Cases of plague are very rare, and antibiotics are effective, but the disease is no joke. It still carries a 11 percent overall mortality rate.
In 2012, two major cases of bubonic plague hit the news. An Oregon man attempted to dislodge a partially-eaten mouse in his pet cat's throat. The mouse was most likely infected. The cat bit the man, which would have left large open wounds for the bacteria to get into. He was treated, but lost his fingers and toes to infection before he recovered.