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Inner Mongolia reports two cases of bubonic plague
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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It’s really not as big of a deal as it seems, especially with swift medical care, which it sounds like they got. Even the US has several cases of bubonic plague every year basically without fail.
I mean the main reason it was so deadly, apart from lack of medical knowledge and access to antibiotics, is that Europe had enormous numbers of people crammed into cities with no sanitation and no pest control. We don't live like that anymore so cases don't spread. The black plague was a disease of its time.
Modern plagues like covid take advantage of how we constantly move people around the world and within countries, which is a different challenge.
You say that, but have you seen the enormous homeless camps in Los Angeles and San Francisco? We're talking about thousands of people without sanitation, clean water, shelter, food or even the ability to wash themselves or their clothes. It's really bad and probably on par with 10th century Europe as far as living conditions, although many of these people are worse off because they lack the ability to take care of themselves and many of them are drug addicts.
Yeah, that's bad, and I imagine if bubonic plague broke out in that one area it could be devastating. It's not the norm across any large portion of society so we won't see a larger outbreak of it.
That's not to say those people don't matter. It's a systemic failure of the highest order that people aren't housed and don't have access to healthcare, it's just they don't create the conditions for a pandemic of that kind. We understand the disease vector now and we have largely eliminated it.
Having these people be homeless in awful conditions is entirely a choice made by the wealthy californians. One that can be remedied in months if the harm to their health becomes larger than the utility of being able to use them as a political pawn. They can also be supplied antibiotics and flea/rodent control tools for a few dollars per capita.
Sadly the state supreme courts have ruled that it is basically illegal to force services on these people. Many of them, particularly the heavy drug addicts are highly resistant to help and are hell-bent on pursuing their drug habit. And it's not just in California, homeless drug users exist everywhere in the United States in all 50 states. Well, I suppose it wouldn't last very long in Alaska due to the winters.
But Florida, California, Oregon Washington Hawaii, they're everywhere. I find homeless people in the middle of the forest, on the coast and in rural towns... Just about everywhere I go I find homeless people now. It's kind of crazy and not something you saw 5 years ago.
Do any of you "we can't provide affordable housing, stop pushing opioids on people, have a social safety net, or permit people to build multi-family dwellings because we found a homeless person who didn't want to be institutionalised and abused" types even remotely comprehend how stupid and evil you sound? Like it wouldn't even be believable as a villain introduction in a comic book.
Stop talking out your ass, you don't know anything.
So that's a yes then.
Pneumonic plague absolutely could spread quite well if it didn't kill you in two days like it does now. Thankfully it seems happy sticking to rodents. If we were really going to see an outbreak of a variant of it that spreads better, I'd expect it to come from Madagascar where plague is quite a problem. Over 200 died in an outbreak in 2017.
Wow that is pretty scary. But yeah, things like how quickly it kills are part of the equation - covid made it across oceans and around within continents by being stealthy on the journey and waiting a while before symptoms appear.
Even without antibiotics, mouse traps and insecticide will stop bubonic plague from spreading.