Man dies from plague in China, 11 others infected

[Heidi]

Source: AP

(AP) – 2 hours ago

BEIJING — Thousands of people have been placed under quarantine in a town in northwest China after a man died of pneumonic plague and 11 others were confirmed infected with the deadly lung infection, health authorities said.

The 32-year-old herdsman died in Ziketan in Qinghai province, the provincial health bureau said in a statement posted on its Web site Saturday. It did not say when he died.

Most of the others infected are relatives of the deceased and are in stable condition in a hospital, the bureau said.

The town of 10,000 people has been placed under quarantine and a team of experts has been sent to the area, it said.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLFGFVYaEEFibpJ7MThpiQsgInWQD99QH66G0

[opihimoimoi]

1. OMG, Plague still around

[Hekate]

3. I know it's creepy, but Bubonic Plague is endemic in rodents in the American Southwest...

Like leprosy, it seems to be something out of the Middle Ages, not the 21st century. And yet... http://www.nps.gov/public_health/inter/info/factsheets/fs_plague.htm

Hekate

[dipsydoodle]

23. Is that plague

or Hantavirus ? http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Hunta+virus

[Hekate]

24. Black Plague, complete with buboes. Rodent fleas are happy little disease-carriers, aren't they?

Eww

[hobbit709]

4. It never left

10-15 cases a year in the U.S. on the average. Last major outbreak was in L.A. in 1924-25 with 30 deaths.

[kestrel91316]

11. Yes. And it's never going away, lol. I live every day with the small but

very real threat of plague in my patients. And it has been known to take veterinarians by surprise and kill or nearly kill them. It's why I am such a "cat nazi" about flea control, lol (fleas are how it usually spreads among animals).

[alphafemale]

2. Wow. It takes a conserted effort to die of something like the plague in a modern society.

Herdsman you say? Oh. OK.

[kestrel91316]

Well, all it really takes is a cat getting the wrong kind of fleas outside

in my area, and then making a trip to the vet, and the vet getting exposed, and then the physician not recognizing the disease. Pretty damned easy, all things considered. I am amazed it doesn't happen more often, lol.

[Baclava]

5. Pneumonic plague can be transmitted person to person. (cough, sneeze)

It's the most serious form of the plague because it's contagious.

Bubonic plague is rarely spread from person to person.

[Joanne98]

6. Chinese Town Quarantined as Man Dies From Plague

Source: Bloomberg

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A Chinese town and its surrounding areas were quarantined after a man died of pneumonic plague and 11 others were infected, the local health authority said.

A 32-year-old herdsman died in Ziketan in Qinghai province, the provincial health department said in a statement dated yesterday. The other 11 infected people are mostly relatives of the deceased and are in “stable condition” in a designated hospital, according to the statement.

The quarantined area is adequately supplied with the necessities and people’s lives are “normal,” the department said. Ziketan, in the eastern part of Qinghai, has a population of about 10,000, most of whom are Tibetans, according to the information provider Baidu.com.

The local health department warned that anyone who has visited Ziketan and the surrounding areas since July 16 and has developed a fever or a cough should seek treatment at a hospital.

Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing and other contaminated articles, according to the World Health Organization. It is caused by the same bacteria that occurs in bubonic plague -- the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, the group said.

If diagnosed early, bubonic plague can be treated with antibiotics. Pneumonic plague, on the other hand, is one of the most deadly infectious diseases and patients can die 24 hours after infection, according to the WHO.

A married couple in western Tibet died in September last year after contracting pneumonic plague, China’s Ministry of Health said in October.


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFXZfA.oMH9g

[melm00se]

7. Plague

historians have theorized that the source of the Black Death was the Far East. the Black Death began to appear in various European ports that were the home of many seafaring merchants that did extensive trading with Far Eastern kingdoms so it shouldn't be a big surprise that cases flare up there fairly regularly.

[nashville_brook]

8. is this where the Uighurs are?

[Frank Booth]

12. No. Most Uighurs are in Xinjiang, though Qinghai also has a lot of ethnic minorities

[FirstLight]

9. Interesting that many of these illnesses are originating in China...

SARS, Bird Flu, etc...
But then again when you look at their pollution levels in air & water (and how that compromises the human immune system, to say the least)and when you look at the population density and the close quarter living with animals, in country as well as city provinces -
I suppose it IS kind of a breeding ground for crazy illnesses...
(of course a conspiracy theorist would probably argue that the chinese govt is TRYING to unleash a superbug of some sort, to limit its own population, or take over the world)

Could the plague crossbreed with one of the flu viruses and become even worse?
I guess speculating on another pandemic is like slowing down at a car crash...it's a morbid curiosity.

[JonQ]

13. High population density

poor sanitation, malnourishment in many areas, great deal of international trade and travel.

Frankly I'm surprised we haven't seen more from them and especially india.

[AngryAmish]

46. Plus humans living in close contact with livestock

[kestrel91316]

14. Plague has nothing to do with pollution. It is endemic in wild rodents,

and gets spread from them to humans usually by flea bites. If all people got was bubonic plague, it wouldn't be so bad. But when they get the pneumonia form, all bets are off because it spreads person-to-person like fricking wildfire. Only certain special antibiotics will kill it, and with the pneumonia form you are usually dead too fast for antibiotics to matter.

Plague is a bacterial disease, so there is no way for it to hybridize with a virus. That would be like an algae hybridizing with a dog.

[du_grad]

19. Plague is caused by a bacteria, not a virus.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/

Plague is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Bacteria do not crossbreed with viruses. Bacteria can mutate, and so can viruses; just not with each other. The organism, luckily, can be easily treated by antibiotics, assuming that the physician takes a good history and realizes what may be going on. Patients can die if not treated properly.

Laboratories are required to report the isolation of this organism to their state health departments who will ultimately notify the CDC.

"It is a U.S. Public Health Service requirement that all suspected plague cases be reported to local and state health departments and the diagnosis confirmed by the CDC. As required by the International Health Regulations, CDC reports all U.S. plague cases to the World Health Organization."

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/info.htm - drugs of choice, according to this page, are Gentamycin and streptomycin. Gentamycin is a powerful antibiotic that must have drug levels monitored by blood draws (peak and trough levels) because it is ototoxic (can cause hearing loss). However, when the choice is death, I'd take gent any day.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/epi.htm - epidemiology (how it's transmitted, including world-wide map of where plague occurs in animals). The majority of U.S. cases are in Arizona and New Mexico., with no cases reported east of the Mississippi.

Control consists of monitoring rodent populations and controlling fleas in endemic areas. Obviously dense populations can contain many rodents and many fleas, which is how the disease can spread. The pneumonic form is the only one that can spread person to person.

I am a microbiology technologist with over 30 years of clinical micro experience. I am located east of the Mississippi, and I have never seen this organism in any culture. It is RARE to isolate this in the U.S., although in endemic areas of the southwest, I'm sure other techs have seen it.

[bemildred]

10. Uh oh.

Pneumonic plague is the second most virulent and second least common form of plague (after septicemic plague), caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Typically, pneumonic form is due to a secondary spread from advanced infection of an initial bubonic form. Primary pneumonic plague results from inhalation of aerosolized infective droplets and can be transmitted from human to human without involvement of fleas or animals. Untreated pneumonic plague has a very high case-fatality ratio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague

[kestrel91316]

15. CDC backgrounder on plague, for those who want to learn more:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/index.htm

Emergency preparedness and plague:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/index.asp

Plague and animals:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/diseases/plague.htm

Travelers' info:
http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2010/chapter-5/plague.aspx

[dugaresa]

16. to be honest I am surprised that there are not more cases of plague

in the poorer more densely populated areas of the world.

All you need are the rodents with the right fleas to co-mingle with people and voila, plague.

[Posteritatis]

17. It doesn't take much to create an environment unfriendly to it

A relatively small amount of hygeine and sanitation really take the legs out from under it, and most varieties of it are very easy to treat these days when contracted. The biggest problem is actually identifying it, because it's getting rare.

[G_j]

18. BBC: Second plague death in west China

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8180816.stm

Second plague death in west China

A second man has died of pneumonic plague in a remote part of north-western China where thousands of people have been quarantined.

The man was identified by Chinese state media as a neighbour aged 37 of the first victim, who was 32, in Ziketan, near Xinghai in Qinghai Province.

The sparsely populated area is mostly inhabited by Tibetans.
Pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread from person to person, or from animals to people

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

20. Scary stuff, easily transmittable human to human with a very high fatality rate.

[steven johnson]

21. Actually generic antibiotics cuts plague death rate to less than 15%

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- An outbreak of pneumonic plague in China that killed two men is unlikely to cause the mass fatalities associated with historical outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.

While the disease can kill 60 percent of its victims if left unchecked, early diagnosis and treatment with generic antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline cuts plague patients’ mortality rate to less than 15 percent, the WHO said on its Web site.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNa6qZ1admp8">China Plague Outbreak Unlikely to Cause Mass Deaths, WHO Says

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

25. Early diagnosis and treatment are keys to cutting the mortality rate. 15% is still quite lethal.

[RedCloud]

22. Well then, a plague upon this plague!

Let's get rid of it.

[BlueJessamine]

26. Plague kills 2nd man; China seals off entire town

Source: Associated Press

BEIJING — A second man has died of pneumonic plague in northwest China, in an outbreak that prompted authorities to lock down a town where about a dozen people were infected with the highly contagious deadly lung disease, a state news agency said.

The World Health Organization office in China said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far to treat and quarantine people were appropriate.

The man who died Sunday was identified only as 37-year-old Danzin from Ziketan, the stricken town in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Danzin was a neighbor of the first person who died, a 32-year-old herdsman whose name was not given. Another 10 people, mostly relatives of the first deceased man, were infected and undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, Xinhua said in a report late Sunday.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLFGFVYaEEFibpJ7MThpiQsgInWQD99R8RGO1

---

snip

The town of 10,000 people has been sealed off and a team of experts was sent to the area, the local health bureau said Sunday, warning that anyone with a cough or fever who has visited the town since mid-July should seek treatment at a hospital.

[harmonicon]

27. oh no! someone is sick somewhere!!

WE NEED A VACCINE NOW!!! PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!

Seriously though, I find this story interesting, and I really feel for the people who are suffering because of this. I just wonder every time now that some illness is reported in the media when it's going to become the new "thing" to completely freak out about it (see this year's Swine Flu, Bird Flu of a few years back, and .... dun dun dun... SARS!!).

[GinaMaria]

28. How many cases of plague are reported worldwide per year?

Is this incident out of the norm? Is it unusual for people in China to have the plague?

Plague, caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, is transmitted from rodent to rodent by infected fleas.

Plague is characterized by periodic disease outbreaks in rodent populations, some of which have a high death rate. During these outbreaks, hungry infected fleas that have lost their normal hosts seek other sources of blood, thus increasing the increased risk to humans and other animals frequenting the area.

Epidemics of plague in humans usually involve house rats and their fleas. Rat-borne epidemics continue to occur in some developing countries, particularly in rural areas. The last rat-borne epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles in 1924-25. Since then, all human plague cases in the U.S. have been sporadic cases acquired from wild rodents or their fleas or from direct contact with plague-infected animals.



Geographic Distribution of Plague

In the United States during the 1980s plague cases averaged about 18 per year. Most of the cases occurred in persons under 20 years of age. About 1 in 7 persons with plague died.

Worldwide, there are 1,000 to 2,000 cases each year. During the 1980s epidemic plague occurred each year in Africa, Asia, or South America. Epidemic plague is generally associated with domestic rats. Almost all of the cases reported during the decade were rural and occurred among people living in small towns and villages or agricultural areas rather than in larger, more developed, towns and cities.

The following information provides a worldwide distribution pattern:

There is no plague in Australia.
There is no plague in Europe; the last reported cases occurred after World War II.
In Asia and extreme southeastern Europe, plague is distributed from the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, through much of the Middle East, eastward through China, and then southward to Southwest and Southeast Asia, where it occurs in scattered, localized foci. Within these plague foci, there are isolated human cases and occasional outbreaks. Plague regularly occurs in Madagascar, off the southeastern coast of Africa.
In Africa, plague foci are distributed from Uganda south on the eastern side of the continent, and in southern Africa. Severe outbreaks have occurred in recent years in Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Mozambique, and Botswana, with smaller outbreaks in other East African countries. Plague also has been reported in scattered foci in western and northern Africa.
In North America, plague is found from the Pacific Coast eastward to the western Great Plains and from British Columbia and Alberta, Canada southward to Mexico. Most of the human cases occur in two regions; one in northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado, another in California, southern Oregon, and far western Nevada.
In South America, active plague foci exist in two regions; the Andean mountain region (including parts of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador) and in Brazil.


Prevention
Plague will probably continue to exist in its many localized geographic areas around the world, and plague outbreaks in wild rodent hosts will continue to occur. Attempts to eliminate wild rodent plague are costly and futile. Therefore, primary preventive measures are directed toward reducing the threat of infection in humans in high risk areas through three techniques -- environmental management, public health education, and preventive drug therapy.



http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/info.htm

[RaleighNCDUer]

30. Plague is endemic to China - they deal with cases of it every year.

But usually it is the less contagious bubonic plague, which is passed from rodents to people through fleas. We have it in the southwest and (of all places) San Franciso. Easily treated with antibiotics.

Pneumonic plague, which is derived from bubonic plague, does not require an insect vector - it goes person to person like a cold, and spreads just as easily. Much rarer, until it gets a foothold, but much deadlier.

[glinda]

33. Have the Chinese brought it to Africa where they are making in roads and sending

a lot of workers? (seeing the future of Africa loosing more of it's natural resources and animals....blech*)

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. Pneumonic plague is not just 'some disease'.

If people are worried it could, just possibly, be because there has not been a major outbreak in the modern age, when there is an already extant overuse of antibiotics. If an anti-biotic resistant strain should develop, as seems inevitable, what would stop us from seeing the 6th, or 10th, or 14th or 17th century outbreaks repeated?

Try reading up on epidemiology. Educate yourself as to WHY people are worried about Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS and plague.

There's a reason why plague is listed as one of the 4 horsemen.

[harmonicon]

31. I realize that, and, as I said, I find the story to be interesting

I hope that no one else in the town dies, and hope the authorities are able to stop the spread of this disease. As far as Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and SARS are concerned, people are worried because they're easily whipped into a frenzy by a lazy media.

[Xithras]

34. An antibiotic-resistant pneumonic plague is a scary thought.

That would make Swine Flu look like the chicken pox, by comparison.

[kimmerspixelated]

42. When religious nuts start killing off all the cats

because they think they are witches or devils again, then I'll be more worried. That's why it was so bad back then, no cats, no natural rodent control!

[Art_from_Ark]

43. It was also bad back then because of human excrement in the streets,

virtually non-existent health-care (and fairly worthless where it did exist), consumption of contaminated food, and a host of other squalid living conditions.

[Moral Compass]

32. Pneumonic Plague is Extremely Serious

Before you trivialize this story look up plague on Wikipedia. Bubonic plague is spread by fleas and lice and often spreads slowly and very unevenly. Common antibiotics can now cure bubonic plague.

Pneumonic plague is another story. It is transmitted very rapidly from person to person via airborne sputum. It is so virulent that it often induces systemic sepsis so rapidly that even though antibiotics will kill the bacterium the host still dies. It is very close to 100% fatal, but it is transmitted so rapidly that it only burns out when it runs out of hosts to kill.

If one person got from the affected village to a large urban area or worse onto a plane the outbreak could kill hundreds of thousands. A nightmare scenario would be the death of millions.

This is the version of plague that killed 1/3 of Europe in the 14th century. It is thought that the plague initially came from China via the Silk Road into Constantinople or Damascus and then on to Venice or Genoa.

Don't sneer at this little news bite. Let's all hope that this form of the plague was contained in rural China.

From Wikipedia:

Pneumonic plague is a very aggressive infection requiring rapid antibiotic treatment within around 24 hours of infection.

Early treatment of pneumonic plague is essential. To reduce the risk of death, antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms.<2> Streptomycin, gentamicin, tetracyclines, and chloramphenicol are all effective against pneumonic plague.

Antibiotic treatment for 7 days will protect people who have had direct, close contact with infected patients. Wearing a close-fitting surgical mask also protects against infection.<2>

Without treatment, the mortality rate from pneumonic plague approaches 100%.<4>

[autorank]

35. China seals off NW town as plague kills 2nd man

Source: Associated Press

By GILLIAN WONG (AP) – 59 minutes ago

BEIJING — China locked down a remote farming town after two people died and 10 more were sickened with pneumonic plague, a lung infection that can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated.

Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in northwestern Qinghai province, where townspeople reached by The Associated Press by phone Monday said the streets were largely deserted and most shops shut.

Authorities urged anyone who had visited the town of 10,000 people since mid-July and has developed a cough or fever to seek hospital treatment.

On Sunday, a 37-year-old man identified only as Danzin became the second reported fatality from the outbreak. He lived next door to the first, a 32-year-old herder. The 10 sickened, mostly relatives of the herder, were undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, the local health bureau said.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLFGFVYaEEFibpJ7MThpiQsgInWQD99RJBV00

---

"Pneumonic plague occurs when Y. pestis infects the lungs. This type of plague can spread from person to person through the air. Transmission can take place if someone breathes in aerosolized bacteria, which could happen in a bioterrorist attack. Pneumonic plague is also spread by breathing in Y. pestis suspended in respiratory droplets from a person (or animal) with pneumonic plague. Becoming infected in this way usually requires direct and close contact with the ill person or animal. Pneumonic plague may also occur if a person with bubonic or septicemic plague is untreated and the bacteria spread to the lungs." http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. And so it begins...

[autorank]

37. How spread, symptoms, prevention

How is pneumonic plague spread? What are the symptoms?

Pneumonic plague occurs when the Y. pestis bacterium is inhaled. The disease may be spread through face-to-face contact when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Because it enters the body by being inhaled, pneumonic plague could be spread intentionally if the bacteria were put into aerosol form.

The symptoms of pneumonic plague begin one to four days after exposure to the bacteria. The symptoms include fever, headache, weakness and a bloody or watery cough due to infection of the lungs (pneumonia). The pneumonia rapidly becomes worse and — without early treatment — it can be fatal.

Preventive measures

If you have symptoms, consult a healthcare provider as soon as possible. If you believe you have been intentionally exposed to pneumonic plague, you should contact law enforcement officials immediately.

There is no vaccine against pneumonic plague. Antibiotics are used to prevent illness in those who have been exposed to pneumonic plague.

Treatment for pneumonic plague

Early treatment with appropriate antibiotics is essential because untreated plague — especially the pneumonic form — is almost always fatal. You should use antibiotics to prevent or treat plague only under the direction of your healthcare provider or local health department.

Washington State Dept. of Health
http://www.doh.wa.gov/phepr/handbook/plague.htm

[autorank]

38. Town sealed off: Ziketan

Google: Ziketan, China plague

http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=ziketan%2C+china+plague&cf=all&scoring=n

--------------------

World Health Organization
http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=10785
Two herdsmen of China’s Qinghai province have died due to complications from a recent outbreak of pneumonic plague, reported Bloomberg.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is monitoring the town, Ziketan, where the outbreak occurred, as well as the families and those who interacted with the herdsmen. The local health department said that those who developed a fever or cough after visiting the city or its neighboring areas should seek medical treatment.

Vivian Tan, a spokesperson for the WHO said, "The fact that this area is so remote is definitely a good thing because it makes it a little harder than say an urban setting for this disease to spread…. Right now, it seems to be somewhat contained."



A closer look at plague and how it is spread

By The Associated Press (AP) – 3 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j2RoixKz5N4V8F3jvZfwThUi38-AD99RHNG01

A look at the pneumonic plague that has killed two in China:

_ Pneumonic plague is the deadliest and least common form of the disease. Patients can die 24 hours after being infected.

_ Plague is an animal disease that circulates mainly among small animals like rats and mice, but the bacteria can also infect humans.

_ Since 2001, the World Health Organization has reported about six plague outbreaks, though some may go unreported because they often happen in remote areas.

[Rebubula]

39. World War Z

LOLZ...that was first thought as well.

Cannot wait for the movie

[pscot]

40. There are plage deaths every year

A person died of it down in California a few years back, and there was an outbreakin India during the 90s that killed a hundred people. The plaque is always with us.

[formercia]

41. Some background

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, plague was used as a bacteriological weapon by the Imperial Japanese Army. These weapons were provided by Shirō Ishii's units and used in experiments on humans before being used on the field. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague.<3> During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. These operations caused epidemic plague outbreaks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague



http://3.1911encyclopedia.org/Plague

--snip--

It is not till the 6th century of our era, in the reign of Justinian, that we find bubonic plague in Europe, a s a part of the great cycle of pestilence, accompanied by extraordinary natural phenomena, which lasted fifty years, and is described with a singular misunderstanding of medical terms by Gibbon in his forty-third chapter. The descriptions of the contemporary writers Procopius, Evagrius and Gregory of Tours are quite unmistakable. 3 The plague of Justinian began at Pelusium in Egypt in A.D. 542; it spread over Egypt, and in the same or the next year passed to Constantinople, where it carried off io,000 persons in one day, with all the symptoms of bubonic plague. It appeared in Gaul in 546, where it is described by Gregory of Tours with the same symptoms as lues inguinaria (from the frequent seat of buboes in the groin). In Italy there was a great mortality in 543, but the most notable epidemic was in 565, which so depopulated the country as to leave it an easy prey to the Lombards. In 571 it is again recorded in Liguria, 1 Amm. Marcell. xxiii. 7; see Hecker, De peste Antoniana (Berlin, 1835).

2 Lib. xliv. cap. Ouvres de Oribase, ed. Bussemaker and Daremberg (Paris, 1851), iii. 607.

Evagrius, Hist. eccles. iv. 29; Procopius, De bello persico, ii. 22, 23.


and in 590 a great epidemic at Rome is connected with the pontificate of Gregory the Great. But it spread in fact over the whole Roman world, beginning in maritime towns and radiating inland. In another direction it extended from Egypt along the north coast of Africa. Whether the numerous pestilences recorded in the 7th century were the plague cannot now be said; but it is possible the pestilences in England chronicled by Bede in the years 664, 672, 679 and 683 may have been of this disease, especially as in 690 pestis inguinaria is again recorded in Rome. For the epidemics of the succeeding centuries we must refer to more detailed works.' It is impossible, however, to pass over the great cycle of epidemics in the 14th century known as the Black Death. Whether in all the pestilences known by this name the disease was really the same may admit of doubt, but it is clear that in some at least it was the bubonic plague. Contemporary observers agree that the disease was introduced from the East; and one eyewitness, Gabriel de Mussis, an Italian lawyer, traced, or indeed accompanied, the march of the plague from the Crimea (whither it was said to have been introduced from Tartary) to Genoa, where with a handful of survivors of a Genoese expedition he landed probably at the end of the year 1347. He narrates how the few that had themselves escaped the pest transmitted the contagion to all they met. 2 Other accounts, especially old Russian chronicles, place the origin of the disease still farther east, in Cathay (or China), where, as is confirmed to some extent by Chinese records, pestilence and destructive inundations are said to have destroyed the enormous number of thirteen millions. It appears to have passed by way of Armenia into Asia Minor and thence to Egypt and northern Africa. Nearly the whole of Europe was gradually overrun by the pestilence. It reached Sicily in 1346, Constantinople, Greece and parts of Italy early in 1347, and towards the end of that year Marseilles. In 1348 it attacked Spain, northern Italy and Rome, eastern Germany, many parts of France including Paris, and England; from England it is said to have been conveyed to the Scandinavian countries. In England the western counties were first invaded early in the year, and London in November. In 1349 we hear of it in the midlands; and in subsequent years, at least till 1357, it prevailed in parts of the country, or generally, especially in the towns. In 1352 Oxford lost two-thirds of her academical population. The outbreaks of 1361 and 1368, known as the second and third plagues of the reign of Edward III., were doubtless of the same disease, though by some historians not called the black death. Scotland and Ireland, though later affected, did not escape.


--snip--

[KakistocracyHater]

44. natural birth control is terrible, but Asia in general is highly overpopulated

I'm thinking this is ONLY the beginning. Food shortages, water shortages, cramped living/working conditions. Better to use contraceptives by far. Disease is like a forest fire, everyone, including non-parents, is affected.

[Heidi]

45. BBC: Plague death toll rises in China (third man dies of plague)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8182734.stm

[Heidi]

47. UPDATE: Dog suspected source of China plague

(AFP) – 1 day ago

BEIJING — A dog is suspected to be the origin of an outbreak of pneumonic plague in northwest China that has killed three people and left 10,000 under strict quarantine, state media reported.

Ziketan, a remote town in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, has been locked down since Saturday in an effort to contain the spread of the highly virulent disease.

One patient was in critical condition and eight others were infected, most of them relatives of the first fatality, a 32-year-old herdsman, or local doctors, Xinhua news agency said.

Initial tests had shown that the herdsman's dead dog was the likely origin of the outbreak, Xinhua reported late Wednesday, quoting professor Wang Hu, director of the Qinghai disease control bureau.

Wang said it was likely that the dog died after eating a plague-infected marmot and that the man became infected when he was bitten by fleas while burying the dead dog. He died three days later.

Read more

[Heidi]

48. UPDATE | Reuters: China lifts blockade on plague-hit town

Sat Aug 8, 2009 10:26pm EDT

BEIJING, Aug 9 (Reuters) - China has ended a quarantine blockade around a remote northwestern town hit by pneumonic plague, Xinhua news agency reported late on Saturday.

The outbreak of the highly infectious disease killed three villagers around Ziketan Town in Qinghai province, Xinhua reported. But with no new infections reported for over a week, authorities decided to lift the blockade on the remote town of 10,000 in a heavily ethnic Tibetan area, Xinhua reported.

China experiences sporadic outbreaks of the plague, which is typically spread by rodents and fleas and can pass easily between people. But the World Health Organisation has said it was not unduly concerned about this latest outbreak.

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