Coming back to bite you

Would Bubonic Plague make a good weapon?

A 1970 World Health Organization assessment asserted that in a worst-case scenario a dissemination of 50 kg of Yersinia pestis in an aerosol cloud over a city of 5 million might result in 150,000 cases of pneumonic plague. Of those, 80,000 to 100,000 cases would require hospitalization, and 36,000 victims would be expected to die.

Of course there are numerous difficulties involved in getting 50kg of bacteria into an aerosol cloud. You could just breed infected fleas instead but, as the video says, they may well come back to bite you...

die.

Got Plague?

In 1914, three men in New Orleans examine rats to determine if they are carrying bubonic plague.  

This article from Discovery news this week has a slightly alarmist headline but makes some good points.

People in the US Still Die from Black Death

Plague, in humans, doesn't pop up a lot. Generally there are between one and seventeen cases per year in the United States, and only about a thousand in total since 1900. 

...

Remembering, and mentioning, exposure to dead or dying animals is key. As for efforts to eliminate it completely - although they've been considered, it would take too much extensive trapping and  it would take too much extensive trapping and testing of animals to be easily accomplished while the plague is still so rare. It looks like we'll continue getting the plague for the foreseeable future.

Plague in affluent areas?

With the news that an Oregon man has been hospitalized with suspected  plague has come some news stories about how bubonic plague is now affecting more affluent areas.

Schotthoefer noted that these more affluent areas where plague occurred were regions where new housing developments had been built in habitats that support the wild reservoirs of plague, which include ground squirrels and woodrats.

Whilst this may be true it should be noted that bubonic plague is a VERY rare disease in the United States these days with only about 11 cases a year on average. (For comparison 73 people are killed by lightning each year in the United States).

Still, you might want to be careful about extracting rodents from the mouths of stray cats...

Traditional videos

The posting of the following videos has become traditional during the Bubonic Plague section of the course. The first one isn't strictly bubonic plague related, it's just included because of the flagellants. Enjoy your long weekend.

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Black Death - the Movie

I'm not sure how extensive the 'historical adventure horror' genre is but I guess this  movie is firmly within it. Not really my cup of tea - I felt obliged to watch it given the title - but it does make you glad to be living in the 21st century.

From the Director:

It's a 'medieval guys on a mission' movie. The period of the black death – what's fantastical and rich about that period? I said, 'What if we took a realistic approach?' The people of the time believe the plague was sent by God to punish them for their sins, or by the Devil to torment them. I wanted to find out what the characters felt and posit them on a journey of 'is it real? Or is it not real?' What would a necromancer be like if he existed? We added this fundamentalist knight, so it touches on fundamentalism. It's a super dark film but it's exciting. It's like a dark parable about how things haven't really moved on in the last 600 years.

Nom Nom Nom

Following on from the post below, here's the Black-footed ferret who likes to snack on prairie dogs and can also succumb to bubonic plague. The black footed ferret is a federally endangered species though and one of the rarest mammals in North America. In 2008 when bubonic plague broke out in the prairie dog colonies ferrets were vaccinated:


In mid-May, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed sylvatic plague in black-tailed prairie dog colonies in the Conata Basin area of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in southwestern South Dakota. As of late June, about 9,000 acres of prairie dog habitat — including colonies occupied by vulnerable black-footed ferrets — have been infected by the disease, according to U.S. Forest Service mapping. Black-tailed prairie dogs are also being reconsidered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

To help increase ferret survival during this outbreak, biologists are vaccinating wild ferrets to provide immunity if they become exposed to plague. The plague vaccine was developed for humans by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease and is being tested and modified for animals at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) in Madison, Wisc.

nom nom nom

Prairie dogs are:

a) cute little critters and an important part of the prairie ecosystem

b) a damaging pest of pastures and fields with their digging and such.

Of course the correct answer is c) all of the above. Unfortunately Prairie Dogs are also a host of bubonic plague which gives the anti-prairie dog campaigners (mainly farmers and ranchers) a pretty powerful argument:

"They need to be managed when they are overpopulated, you want to remember, when they get overpopulated, they have a tendency to have bubonic plague. And bubonic plague is contagious to people."

Hence Bill LB473 before the Nebraska Legislature that would give counties the power and duties to carry out a management program to help control the animals.

What is missing from the disease argument though is whether an increase in the levels of bubonic plague in prairie dog populations ever actually leads to cases in humans.

Draft genome

Here is the latest paper on bubonic plague and the Black Death, from just a few months ago:
A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death
Although the study confirmed the basic story from last year - that the bacteria that caused the Black Death was the ancestor of all modern bubonic plague strains - it did not find any obvious change in virulence genes that might account for the huge mortality that the Black Death caused.

'(W)e posit that molecular changes in pathogens are but one component of a constellation of factors contributing to changing infectious disease prevalence and severity, where genetics of the host population, climate, vector dynamics, social conditions and synergistic interactions with concurrent diseases should be foremost in discussions of population susceptibility to infectious disease and host–pathogen relationships with reference to Y. pestis infections.'

Fear always brings out the best in people...

In 1900, San Francisco’s Chinatown was quarantined with barbed wire fences when a Chinese laborer was suspected to have died of Bubonic plague.

While the cause of death was still undetermined, a cordon was placed around Chinatown, and no Chinese American was allowed to leave the area bounded by California, Kearny, Broadway, and Stockton streets. This restricted the freedom of movement of people, some of whom were American citizens. It caused them many hardships, for they had difficulty in obtaining goods and services from people outside Chinatown. There was a shortage of food, and prices increased sharply. Chinese American businessmen faced a loss of income, and workers a loss of wages. After three and a half months, it was found that there were no cases of bubonic plague within Chinatown. This lengthy quarantine of Chinatown was motivated more by racist images of Chinese as carriers of disease than by actual evidence of the presence of bubonic plague. 

Still, at least they didn't accidentally  burn the area to the ground.

Bubonic Plague video classics

It's now traditional to open the Bubonic Plague week with these two Bubonic Plague video classics.

The always popular John Stewart and and an interesting depiction of medieval flagellants in a German rock video.

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Tradition

It's traditional that at this point in the course I post this video.

For those who wish to know more about the flagellants of the middle-ages we mentioned today here's the Google article, the rather interesting Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the flagellants it links to and, above, a demonstration, albeit not from the middle ages, by German rock band Rammstein also courtesy of Google. That's the band beating themselves there and they seem to be really putting some effort into it.

Plague Doctors

Doctors during the bubonic plague pandemic of the Middle Ages would often visit victims solely to verify whether or not they had the plague. Since “cures” of the time had little, if any, effect on the plague the doctors were basically useless. All they could do was diagnose the soon to be dead victim.

But at least they got to wear awesome costumes while doing it!

A Plague Doctor’s uniform consisted of:

· A wide brimmed black hat worn close to the head.

· A primitive gas mask in the shape of a bird’s beak. People suffering from the epidemic believed that the plague was spread through “bad air” (the Miasma theory), so there was a belief that the air would be drawn from the patient onto the beak of the mask, which was often filled with aromatic herbs and spices to overpower it.

· Red eye glasses were also part of the mask. They were thought to make the wearer impervious to evil.

· A long black overcoat. To minimize skin exposure, the overcoat was tucked in behind the mask at the neckline and extended to the feet of the doctors. The coat was usually coated head to toe in wax which was thought to repel the plague.

· A wooden cane. Used to direct family members or others around to move the victim. Essentially it helped the doctors touch the victim without actually having to touch them.

· Leather breeches. Worn beneath the cloak to protect the legs and groin area, a spot thought to be particularly sensitive to the plague because the lymph nodes in the groin area would swell when one was infected with the plague.

Black Death Song

A Medieval Song about the Bubonic Plague:

"A sickly season," the merchant said,
"The town I left was filled with dead,
and everywhere these queer red flies
crawled upon the corpses' eyes,
eating them away."

"Fair make you sick," the merchant said,
"They crawled upon the wine and bread.
Pale priests with oil and books,
bulging eyes and crazy looks,
dropping like the flies."

"I had to laugh," the merchant said,
"The doctors purged, and dosed, and bled;
"And proved through solemn disputation
"The cause lay in some constellation.
"Then they began to die."

"First they sneezed," the merchant said,
"And then they turned the brightest red,
Begged for water, then fell back.
With bulging eyes and face turned black,
they waited for the flies."

"I came away," the merchant said,
"You can't do business with the dead.
"So I've come here to ply my trade.
"You'll find this to be a fine brocade..."

And then he sneezed.

Plague without rats

From the Journal of Medieval History - Plague without rats: The case of fifteenth-century Iceland 

In the fifteenth century Iceland was ravaged by two epidemics which usually have been identified as plague. It is shown here that these epidemics were no less lethal than the Black Death in Europe. The first one probably killed half the population or more and persisted in the country for at least a year and a half. Since, for several reasons, it can safely be assumed that Iceland was not populated by rats at this time, this may offer the strongest available proof that an epidemic like the Black Death was not dependent on rats for its dissemination.

DR Congo Plague Outbreak Spreads

An outbreak of what is thought to be pneumonic plague has spread to a second town in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Pneumonic plague occurs when the Yersinia pestis bacteria infects the lungs. It has a very high mortality rate and can be transmitted from person to person by way of respiratory droplets. The outbreak began days after a diamond mine re-opened north of the country's biggest city. Sixty people have died so far and all have been diamond miners. Another 350 miners have been infected. Experts from the World Health Organization has visited the area to confirm that people are infected with the plague.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4290783.stm

Distinct clones

Here's the recent Black Death - Bubonic Plague article I mentioned in class in case any of you are interested in molecular biology:
Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death

Our results thus resolve a long-standing debate about the etiology of the Black Death and provide key information about the evolution of the plague bacillus and the spread of the disease during the Middle Ages.

Rats and Plague

Scientific American magazine has a regular feature where they reprint news articles and stories from 50, 100 and 150 years ago. In the February 2011 edition they reprinted this article entitled 'Rats and Plague' from the February 1911 issue

ALTHOUGH the recent epidemics of bubonic plague in China, India, and other parts of the world have been always associated with outbreaks of the same disease among rats, the historical study of plague throughout the world reveals the singular fact that previous to 1800 very few references to a coincident mortality among rats have been put on record. Many excellent accounts of the older outbreaks, notably of the Black Death in Europe in 1347, and the Great Plague of London in 1665, are in existence, but careful research into these documents by modern historiographers — Haeser, Hirsch, Abel, and Sticker — has shown that for reasons difficult to discover very scanty mention of associated rat mortality has been made.

Check out the full article. This is a nice trailer for our next lecture.

Squirrels are rodents too

Campground closed after ground squirrel tests positive for plague

Los Angeles County public health and U.S. Forest Service officials have closed the Los Alamos Campground in the Angeles National Forest after a California ground squirrel captured two weeks ago tested positive for plague.

The camp, between Gorman and Pyramid Lake, was closed Saturday afternoon and will remain closed for at least 10 days, said Jonathan Fielding, the county's public health director. Squirrel burrows in the area will be dusted for fleas, and further testing will be conducted before the campground is reopened.

No news on how the squirrel is doing..... (with apologies to Gary Larson)

Black Death

Well apparently there is a new movie out in the UK and in Germany called 'Black Death', which, perhaps not surprisingly, is set during the Black Death. Here's the summary:

In a plague-ridden medieval England, Osmund, a young monk, is charged in leading the fearsome knight Ulrich, and his group of mercenaries to a remote village where the inhabitants are unaffected by the deadly pestilence.

and some of the more entertaining reviews from rottentomatoes

'Though its title must rank as one of the most off-putting in film history, Black Death isn't as bad as you might fear.'

'Released into an era of poverty, pestilence and bad religion, Christopher Smiths historical horror-thriller Black Death fits the new Dark Ages like an bloodied iron gauntlet.'

'Dark and dirty entertainment.'

No information on a US release but you can watch a trailer. Looks like they managed to sneak some flagellants in there.

Unguarded mini fridge and Denialism

I've posted the first one before but it's still funny. Enjoy the weekend.

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