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Bubonic Plague Strikes in Mongolia: Why Is It Still a Threat? (2019)

68 points| onetimemanytime | 6 years ago |npr.org | reply

17 comments

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[+] dmckeon|6 years ago|reply
The plague is endemic in fleas on rodents and small wild animals in the US Southwest. Most people who contract it are first treated with antibiotics after presenting with the typical symptoms, and only a few days later do the test results confirm the presumed diagnosis.

The riskiest situation is exposure to plague and then quickly traveling to some other location where plague is rarely seen, and doctors at the destination do not know to look at the symptoms as possibly plague, and to tentatively treat for plague before testing confirms the diagnosis. Medical groups in New Mexico have several time done public awareness programs using the tag line: “Land of the flea, home of the plague.”

https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

[+] peter303|6 years ago|reply
Prairie dogs in Colorado. A number of pet dogs and a human owner or two get it each year. If recognized early, antibiotics work fine.
[+] forkexec|6 years ago|reply
Yep. And hantavirus is carried by rodents, rather than fleas, mostly west of the Mississippi in many states.

Actually, there are about a half dozen terrible, rodent-borne human-transmissible diseases at this link (except Lassa is in Africa, not the US that I know of):

https://www.cdc.gov/rodents/diseases/direct.html

[+] 9nGQluzmnq3M|6 years ago|reply
> Land of the flea, home of the plague

That sounds like a much catchier slogan for tourism than the current "Here, Every True Adventure Has a Story". https://www.newmexico.org/

[+] walterkrankheit|6 years ago|reply
That's a worrying bit of information... Bubonic still around in times of coronavirus.
[+] vikramkr|6 years ago|reply
I mean, bubonic has been been around for a while, and as far as threats go it's not exactly the highest on the list. Cholera, malaria, influenza, etc are all quite a bit more dangerous to society, as is coronavirus while it's actively spreading.
[+] stevespang|6 years ago|reply
35 years ago I dated a Continental airlines stewardess who told me as a young girl she was diagnosed with the bubonic plague and treated. They never discovered where she picked it up as a young girl in Texas.
[+] onetimemanytime|6 years ago|reply
did she tell before or after :) ...? I know, it's just an infection, but now that's a conversation starter
[+] LessDmesg|6 years ago|reply

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[+] ken47|6 years ago|reply
Nice illogical, racist rant. In case you don't understand science (and it seems like you don't), the bubonic plague doesn't care what its victims' beliefs are.

"In 2015, 16 people in the Western United States developed plague, including 2 cases in Yosemite National Park.[20] These US cases usually occur in rural northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, southern Colorado, California, southern Oregon, and far western Nevada."

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

[+] 29athrowaway|6 years ago|reply
China just outlawed the consumption of wild animals. They're actively confiscating all wild animal meat. But since there is still a market for it, the ban could just make the prices go higher and the situation could effectively worsen.

They implemented a ban on ivory a couple of years ago as well. But this ban should have been implemented earlier.