HEALTH Suspected case of BUBONIC PLAGUE registered in China, days after Mongolian outbreak

[Burrito]

Suspected case of BUBONIC PLAGUE registered in China, days after Mongolian outbreak

A suspected case of bubonic plague has been registered in China’s north, according to local health authorities. The news comes after two similar cases were detected in neighboring Mongolia.

www.rt.com

Suspected case of BUBONIC PLAGUE registered in China, days after Mongolian outbreak

A suspected case of bubonic plague has been registered in China’s north, according to local health authorities. The news comes after two similar cases were detected in neighboring Mongolia.
The case was registered at a hospital in China’s Inner Mongolia region, its health commission said in a statement on Sunday.
This prompted a third-level warning of a potential epidemic in the region. The alert comes into force immediately and will be in place until the end of this year. It’s believed the patient in question is suffering from the bubonic form, which causes swollen lymph nodes, and is considered to be the most easily treated variant of the disease.

It’s believed the patient in question is suffering from the bubonic form, which causes swollen lymph nodes, and is considered to be the most easily treated variant of the disease. The plague also has a pneumonic and an extra-deadly septicemic form that can kill a victim within a day.
Earlier this week, two people also tested positive for the bubonic plague in neighboring Mongolia.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, the potential return of the dreaded plague is definitely the last thing the world needs. So far, Covid-19 has infected nearly 11.5 million people, killing more than 530,000 of them.
Yet the toll from coronavirus is dwarfed by that of the plague, which has caused pandemics at least three times in the course of history. It has an extremely high mortality rate, at around 95 percent, and caused the deaths of tens of millions before healthcare evolved enough to treat it. The last such pandemic was in the 19th century, and it hit China and India particularly hard.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 cases of the plague are still registered worldwide each year, with many of them originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

[Dennis Olson]

Who cares? The plague is easily treatable today. In fact, there are several cases in the US each year. IIRC armadillos are carriers.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Who cares? The plague is easily treatable today. In fact, there are several cases in the US each year. IIRC armadillos are carriers.

As are rats, IIRC.

 

[EMICT]

As are rats, IIRC.

... and whatever else they choose to eat over there.

 

[dstraito]

Seems like China has quite the history

The first two major plague pandemics began with the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. The most recent, the so-called “Third Pandemic,” erupted in 1855 in the Chinese province of Yunnan.

The disease traversed the globe over the next several decades, and by the beginning of the 20th century, infected rats traveling on steamships had carried it to all six inhabited continents. The worldwide outbreak would eventually claim some 15 million lives before petering out in the 1950s. Most of the devastation took place in China and India, but there were also scattered cases from South Africa to San Francisco. Despite the heavy casualties, the Third Pandemic led to several breakthroughs in doctors’ understanding of the bubonic plague. In 1894, a Hong Kong-based doctor named Alexandre Yersin identified the bacillus Yersinia pestis as the cause of the disease.

A few years later, another physician finally confirmed that bites from rat fleas were the main way the infection spread to humans.

 

[Melodi]

Yes, it is treatable, if there is a massive flare somewhere in the back of beyond though it can increase in numbers rapidly and suddenly getting ENOUGH antibiotics out to treat everyone can be problematic.

That is why epidemiologists follow the Black Plague so closely and why when Nightwolf and I married the UK was testing every passenger coming in from India and parts of Asia due to an outbreak there.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Who cares? The plague is easily treatable today. In fact, there are several cases in the US each year. IIRC armadillos are carriers.

True... assuming there's no shortage of antibiotics. This could be the excuse China needs for not allowing any antibiotics they manufacture out of the country.

 

[Hawkgirl_70]

I'm waiting for the day, which I think will be very soon, when China starts severely limiting the sale of drugs to the US.

 

[packyderms_wife]

I'm waiting for the day, which I think will be very soon, when China starts severely limiting the sale of drugs to the US.

I think they already have from what I've been reading online.

 

[Melodi]

Every few decades, the life cycle of this bacteria is such that it seems to try to jump from animal hosts into the human population and go pandemic.

The last time it started to get out of hand was 1894, when it managed to travel via steamship to most of the known world, but it was stopped from becoming a major problem in the West.

It did, however, become chronic in different animals and areas of the world including the US - I think we talked about the park ranger before in Northern Califonia who called a friend to say her cat seemed a little sick and she was talking to the vet in the morning by which time both of them were dead.

That is the other problem, while people can linger for a week or two, it can kill in just a few hours; even before a person knows they are ill.

This is also why on occasion it can jump from animals to humans and spread like wildfire.

As long as modern antibiotics and good disease tracking take place, it is likely this will only be a localized problem (local may be a relative term in places like Mongolia or rural China) but if antibiotics every STOP working - we are really in uncharted waters.

 

[ShadowMan]

The Southwestern US is endemic to Bubonic Plague via ground squirrels and such....THANKS to an outbreak in the late 1800's from................wait for it................................wait for it....................................wait for it.........................CHINA!!

Do you think it's time to quarantine that friggen country?!?!?

 

[JeanCat]

Armadillos also carry leprosy

 

[Broken Arrow]

My pasture at our old house was 150 acres of nothing but plague. Prairie dogs all carry the plague flea. I never got it, my kids never got it, my animals didn't get it. And even if we did, its not a big deal to treat now.

 

[Dennis Olson]

Armadillos also carry leprosy

That’s right. That’s the disease they carry, not plague.

 

[Windy Ridge]

Prairie dogs in northern Montana sometimes transfer their fleas and plague to prairie dog hunters.
Usually only one or two a year.

Windy Ridge

 

[Doomer Doug]

Don't forget Madagascar has the pestis bacteria there also.

 

[Doomer Doug]

Just think of the disease outbreak China will have if the 3 corners dam collapses.

 

[Doomer Doug]

I thought it was field mice that carried bacteria down in New Mexico et al.

 

[ShadowMan]

Doug, anything that can carry fleas can carry Plague. In New Mexico (which also has indemic plague) it's the Hunta Virus that field mice and kangaroo rats carry in their urine and feces.

 

[Melodi]

My pasture at our old house was 150 acres of nothing but plague. Prairie dogs all carry the plague flea. I never got it, my kids never got it, my animals didn't get it. And even if we did, its not a big deal to treat now.

Unless of course like the park ranger in California you are unlucky enough to have a pet (or a rat/prairie dog/squirrel etc) inside or near your home that gets the pneumonic form, then (like that poor lady ranger) someone can be dead in their sleep by morning.

Those reports were all over the place in the 14th and 16th centuries and no one understood why, educated doctors (especially German, Jewish or Arabic ones) of the time were not stupid. If it had only been rats, they probably could have figured out the connection (and some of them did speculate on it).

But when it morphed into the blood disease and later the airborne form, that seems to be when this disease became a super-killer of humans.

So far plague pit research over the last five years or so (you won't find this in older books) shows that is was this airborne version that caused the population wipeouts from Bronze Age Scandinavia to Eurasia in the 14th.

This and natural mutations are the reason WHY governments pay attention when this disease breaks out among even small groups of humans or large (but not isolated) groups of animals.

You can keep people away from Praire Dog mounds but even with 21 cats, living in an old stone farmhouse with similar outbuildings we still have the occasion rat around here (poison is less effective we've tried) and with the lack of trash pick up during quarantine, I know some health departments in the UK are quietly getting worried.

This disease isn't gone, only sleeping; the good news is the most common version can be treated if caught soon enough but once it takes off in can spread very quickly.

Not something to keep people up at night (yet) unless you are a novelist plotting your next thriller but it is something pay attention to.

 

[Dennis Olson]

Hi Melodi! How’s my favorite rabid (no pun intended) pathological INTJ-est of INTJs doing this morning?

 

[Melodi]

My Engineer ISTJ Housemate is in training today and had to leave the house at 4 am.

This ENFP is still recovering from several health issues that have her in front a computer with too much time on her hands (lol).

If you mean Nightwolf, he's never had a real test but he's super-Aspie as in "I married Sheldon" so he may be an INTJ but we just don't know.

He's not feeling well either but spending the day doing chores like hauling the garbage literally 1/2 mile to the pickup point (we've measured it) finishing the chicken bone broth and looking after the animals including his new beehives.

He did take time to review some of the medical staff on the Main - I've posted both on the main forum and a bit more in the bomb shelter on this.

Or are you referring to the many-moths of serious research we both did on the Black Death before writing novels set in 14th century Germany that our publisher should be back out again in a couple of months?....lol

 

[Dennis Olson]

No, I mean YOU. I have never in my life been exposed to someone who literally takes ANY POST off on a tangential, often lengthy, discussion. EVERY TIME.

 

[psychgirl]

Melodi has the gift of high IQ and knowledge on almost every topic, seems like to me. And good stories to tell, too!
I’m following her BS thread as we speak.

 

[Dennis Olson]

The fact remains that she drifts most every thread with those lengthy explanations. I almost cringe when I see her name on a post these days. (She's gotten much worse as time has gone by. Or better. It depends on one's PoV.)

 

[Melodi]

No, I mean YOU. I have never in my life been exposed to someone who literally takes ANY POST off on a tangential, often lengthy, discussion. EVERY TIME.

Wrong personality type assessment, I've been tested at least four times by professionals,
I am an ENFP and have been since childhood.

 

[Melodi]

The fact remains that she drifts most every thread with those lengthy explanations. I almost cringe when I see her name on a post these days. (She's gotten much worse as time has gone by. Or better. It depends on one's PoV.)

Actually, I've tried very hard to do shorter posts on many topics, I try to save the long ones for topics like this that really are complex and that people have asked about.

I'll try to make the other posts even shorter if you like...

 

[Melodi]

I forgot I came here to post this, sent to me by someone else who has an interest in this topic (I suspect this is just another piece of the puzzle, not the ultimate research outcome but interesting none the less:

Black Death 'spread by humans not rats'

Human body lice, rather than rat fleas, spread plague during the Black Death, a study simulating the outbreak suggests.

www.bbc.com

Science & Environment

Black Death 'spread by humans not rats'
By Victoria GillScience correspondent, BBC News

• 15 January 2018

Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionThe bite of rat-borne fleas infected with the bubonic plague has been blamed for disease transmission during the medieval pandemic
Rats were not to blame for the spread of plague during the Black Death, according to a study.
The rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe.
But a team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara now says the first, the Black Death, can be "largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice".
The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, uses records of its pattern and scale.
The Black Death claimed an estimated 25 million lives, more than a third of Europe's population, between 1347 and 1351.

Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionHas the black rat (Rattus rattus) been falsely blamed for spreading plague during the Black Death?
"We have good mortality data from outbreaks in nine cities in Europe," Prof Nils Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, told BBC News.
"So we could construct models of the disease dynamics [there]."
He and his colleagues then simulated disease outbreaks in each of these cities, creating three models where the disease was spread by:

• rats
• airborne transmission
• fleas and lice that live on humans and their clothes

In seven out of the nine cities studied, the "human parasite model" was a much better match for the pattern of the outbreak.
It mirrored how quickly it spread and how many people it affected.
"The conclusion was very clear," said Prof Stenseth. "The lice model fits best."
"It would be unlikely to spread as fast as it did if it was transmitted by rats.
"It would have to go through this extra loop of the rats, rather than being spread from person to person."

Prof Stenseth said the study was primarily of historical interest - using modern understanding of disease to unpick what had happened during one of the most devastating pandemics in human history.
But, he pointed out, "understanding as much as possible about what goes on during an epidemic is always good if you are to reduce mortality [in the future]".
Plague is still endemic in some countries of Asia, Africa and the Americas, where it persists in "reservoirs" of infected rodents.
According to the World Health Organization, from 2010 to 2015 there were 3,248 cases reported worldwide, including 584 deaths.
And, in 2001, a study that decoded the plague genome used a bacterium that had come from a vet in the US who had died in 1992 after a plague-infested cat sneezed on him as he had been trying to rescue it from underneath a house.
"Our study suggests that to prevent future spread hygiene is most important," said Prof Stenseth.
"It also suggests that if you're ill, you shouldn't come into contact with too many people. So if you're sick, stay at home."
Follow Victoria on Twitter

 

[Dafodil]

Ignore Dennis. I enjoy your posts.

 

[Dennis Olson]

Actually, I've tried very hard to do shorter posts on many topics, I try to save the long ones for topics like this that really are complex and that people have asked about.

I'll try to make the other posts even shorter if you like...

I don't think you can not be you - heh. So I'm busting your balls in semi-jest over something you have no control over.

 

[Melodi]

I just find it amusing you think I am an INTJ, in reality, I am simply surrounded by them...(and I've been tested at least four times by professionals and too many times to count on the "long-versions" you can take online).

The only thing that has changed is that I go from an extreme extrovert to much more centered as I've aged.

When you are a weird kid who can't spell for beans or do proper addition and subtraction but can bore adults silly with the exact contents of King Tut's Tomb or recite endless "poetry" from Mad Magazine and "A Space Child's Mother Goose" the school districts love to call in "experts" to "test you."....

 

[Dennis Olson]

but can bore adults silly with the exact contents of King Tut's Tomb or recite endless "poetry" from Mad Magazine and "A Space Child's Mother Goose"

Oh, how well we know my dear....

 

[Melodi]

Oh, how well we know my dear....

Last thread drift - in the late 1970s when I went to see the exhibit with some Latin American students I was explaining the various contents, histories, and context of the finds in Spanish to my friends.

I turned around and there were at least 40 people and the official Spanish language tour guide behind me hanging on every word I said: "over to the you" to the guide and she said, "oh no, please keep going your doing just fine..."

I used to take my Dad's copy of the Tomb contents to bed with me for bedtime reading starting about age nine...

Did you know he made his own jewelry? ...no wait help thread drift...stop me before the button "Tut" is pushed lol!

 

[Dennis Olson]

Look, a squirrel!!!

 

[Melodi]

Look, a squirrel!!!

No, it ... it, it , it it's a KITTY and YARN!