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| "Ratcatchers during a 1900 outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, Australia" (From Historium) |
"Australia suffered greatly from the effects of bubonic plague in the first two decades of the 20th century. The Australian colonial government had been wary of plague arriving in Sydney via shipping trade routes since the 1894 outbreak in Hong Kong. When plague did reach Australia in 1900, the response was one of panic and dread, fuelled by the knowledge of the history and ravenous potential of the disease." - Sydney Medical School
... and in the 21st century also: "Although plague is now rare in Europe, it recently sickened more than 10,000 people in Congo over a decade, and cases still occasionally emerge in the Western United States, according to a study published Sept. 16 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene." - LiveScience (2013)
and even in America: "This review documents plague in human cases in the 1st decade of the 21st century... In the United States, 57 persons were reported to have the disease, of which seven died... Two United States scientists suffered fatal accidental exposures: a wildlife biologist, who carried out an autopsy on a mountain lion in Arizona in 2007, and a geneticist with subclinical hemochromatosis in Chicago, who was handling an avirulent strain of Y. pestis in 2009." - The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2013)
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| http://www.who.int/csr/disease/plague/Plague-map-2016.pdf?ua=1 |
8 comments:
I see Blighty, for the moment, does not feature on that map - we can do without the Seventh Seal again. After all, polio only disappeared in the 50s. Question is - is this “induced” plague?
@James: seems the mediaeval outbreak came from the Gobi desert. I think most of us in the UK have immunity because those of our ancestors who didn't died. Just surprised at the so-recent reappearance in OZ, USA - though the Oz one was imported from China, it seems.
@James, again: I remember classmates with calipers.
The good news is that we now have anti-biotics. The bad news is that many strains are resistant.
Polio is still an issue in India and Pakistan, and the peasants are killing the aid workers giving out the vaccine.
Hi Sack
I think the plague area is a lot larger. The vector is a flea and it can survive without a blood meal for two years. Frost will kill them. There is a larger area of the earth without frost.
The aggravating thing is that some of the most virulent forms of plague are listed as cases of pneumonia. We don't want to panic the masses. Pneumonic plague can kill in hours. Systemic and bubonic plague are more survivable. They are all the same animal, they kill you in different ways. Y Pestis is its name.
Hi Jim - "virulent forms of plague are listed as cases of pneumonia" - interesting point. Though there is a pneumonic version of plague.
Not to worry. We'll have sufficient warning before a major plague of any kind.
We are better fed now, with clean water, so those diseases don't spread as fast as they used to.
Now, when we have the inevitable major crop failure...
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