Plague of Justinian and The Black Death, what will we call it next go around?

t.nbcnews.com...

Very scary, same bacteria with rodent hosts. An airborne mutation would kill in just 24 hours? Holy Hell!!! I wonder when it will resurface in mass? Round 3 may be most of our tickets getting punched.

Ah, the ever popular Black Death.

I did my high school term paper on it. My teacher likely thought I was morbidly odd.

The thing about it becoming pneumonic plague is that it's both a blessing and curse. Curse in that it can go airborne and is so virulent. Blessing in that it kills so quickly that it rather limits its effectiveness to spread itself. It's sort of like Ebola that way. The faster a disease kills, the less new victims it can infect. 24 hours really limits the amount of time a person has to go about coughing up plague droplets on other people, and the victim isn't going very far for a portion of that time.

The deadly thing about the plague is that it's all the same disease - pneumonic, bubonic, septicemic. So the rats carrying bubonic around with the plague fleas can give you bubonic plague, or they could infect you with a strain that becomes septicemic or pneumonic. That's why the plague could spread so effectively with all three diseases tending to crop up. The rats and the fleas with the Yersinia pestis could and did go everywhere.

reply to post by ketsuko


Good info. I wonder if that ship infested with rats is the delivery....abandoned and floating aimlessly. Maybe all those coffins DHS bought are for something like this. The dead, decaying corpses would would need to be cremated immediately.

reply to post by Boscov


Plague is already endemic in the US. Prairie dogs carry it. The question really is whether or not they carry quite the same strain of Yersinia pestis as the one that causes the Black Death. There is also some question as to whether or not All Yersinia pestis is capable of causing Black Death, but something about climate conditions can cause it to morph/mutate into plague bacteria instead of what we have now which causes isolated infections every year.

I've read that plague outbreaks have occurred from Egypt and the big Black Death was from the Mongolian/Asian steps and travelled the Silk Road. There was also a virulent outbreak of plague in Madagascar late this past year ... but was it the same?

So, it's possible our own Y. pestis could turn on us at any time. I think our standard of living would generally work against it, though. We do have fleas, but flea control is a priority. Wholesale spread would be difficult to achieve I think.

reply to post by ketsuko


I sure hope you are correct about our cleanliness and preparedness. Weird weather extremes tend to trigger rodent movement.

Boscov
t.nbcnews.com...

Very scary, same bacteria with rodent hosts. An airborne mutation would kill in just 24 hours? Holy Hell!!! I wonder when it will resurface in mass? Round 3 may be most of our tickets getting punched.

The Justinian Plague came 1500 years ago, the Black Plague happened 500 years ago. If it's somehow cyclical then the next time might be 500 years into the future.

Given the terrible things it does to an infected person's armpits, they would call the next outbreak "The Lynx Effect".

Although I believe in the US, Lynx is called Axe... so you guys would call it "The Axe Effect". You guys and your silly names, and silly feet and inches...

Regards,
Rewey

reply to post by Boscov


Bubonic plauge is bacterial. The "Black Death" was viral. It comes from Europeans. Not from Africa, rats or monkeys. It's already here.
“The fact that the CCR5-delta 32 mutation is restricted to Europe suggests that the plagues of the Middle Ages played a big part in raising the frequency of the mutation. These plagues were also confined to Europe, persisted for more than 300 years and had a 100% case mortality.”
Around 1900, historians spread the idea that the plagues of Europe were not a directly infectious disease but were outbreaks of bubonic plague, overturning an accepted belief that had stood for 550 years. Professor Duncan and Dr Scott illustrated in their book, Return of the Black Death (2004, Wiley), that this idea was incorrect and the plagues of Europe (1347-1660) were in fact a continuing series of epidemics of a lethal, viral, haemorrhagic fever that used the CCR5 as an entry port into the immune system.
Using computer modeling, they demonstrated how this disease provided the selection pressure that forced up the frequency of the mutation from 1 in 20,000 at the time of the Black Death to values today of 1 in 10.
Lethal, viral haemorrhagic fevers were recorded in the Nile valley from 1500 BC and were followed by the plagues of Mesopotamia (700-450BC), the plague of Athens (430BC), the plague of Justinian (AD541-700) and the plagues of the early Islamic empire (AD627-744). These continuing epidemics slowly raised the frequency from the original single mutation to about 1 in 20,000 in the 14th century simply by conferring protection from an otherwise certain death.
Professor Duncan added: “Haemorrhagic plague did not disappear after the Great Plague of London in 1665-66 but continued in Sweden, Copenhagen, Russia, Poland and Hungary until 1800. This maintenance of haemorrhagic plague provided continuing selection pressure on the CCR5-delta 32 mutation and explains why it occurs today at its highest frequency in Scandinavia and Russia.”

www.sciencedaily.com...

reply to post by ketsuko


“The fact that the CCR5-delta 32 mutation is restricted to Europe suggests that the plagues of the Middle Ages played a big part in raising the frequency of the mutation. These plagues were also confined to Europe, persisted for more than 300 years and had a 100% case mortality.”
Around 1900, historians spread the idea that the plagues of Europe were not a directly infectious disease but were outbreaks of bubonic plague, overturning an accepted belief that had stood for 550 years. Professor Duncan and Dr Scott illustrated in their book, Return of the Black Death (2004, Wiley), that this idea was incorrect and the plagues of Europe (1347-1660) were in fact a continuing series of epidemics of a lethal, viral, haemorrhagic fever that used the CCR5 as an entry port into the immune system.
Using computer modeling, they demonstrated how this disease provided the selection pressure that forced up the frequency of the mutation from 1 in 20,000 at the time of the Black Death to values today of 1 in 10.
Lethal, viral haemorrhagic fevers were recorded in the Nile valley from 1500 BC and were followed by the plagues of Mesopotamia (700-450BC), the plague of Athens (430BC), the plague of Justinian (AD541-700) and the plagues of the early Islamic empire (AD627-744). These continuing epidemics slowly raised the frequency from the original single mutation to about 1 in 20,000 in the 14th century simply by conferring protection from an otherwise certain death.
Professor Duncan added: “Haemorrhagic plague did not disappear after the Great Plague of London in 1665-66 but continued in Sweden, Copenhagen, Russia, Poland and Hungary until 1800. This maintenance of haemorrhagic plague provided continuing selection pressure on the CCR5-delta 32 mutation and explains why it occurs today at its highest frequency in Scandinavia and Russia.”

www.sciencedaily.com...

We need to question our scientist and media. This has been known for years.

What will we call the new black death?
*sigh*
obamy care