THE RETURN OF A GHASTLY NIGHTMARE

Madagascar faces a bubonic plague epidemic unless it slows the spread of the disease, experts have warned.

How cheerful, not. Another Black Death story...

bb1 wrote:Madagascar faces a bubonic plague epidemic unless it slows the spread of the disease, experts have warned.

How cheerful, not. Another Black Death story...

It's still there, and in other parts of the world, which is frightening. LL

Yes, but at least we know it's not caused by Miasma now, LL.....

bb1 wrote:Yes, but at least we know it's not caused by Miasma now, LL.....

No, just those hovels many are forced to live in sharing rooms with infected rats and fleas. LL  

Suitable attire for plague areas.

The local council could always try employing rat-catchers....I appreciate that setting fire to the slums is probably a bit drastic, but it worked in 1666...

http://news.sky.com/story/1202094/black-death-could-strike-again-warning

Black Death 'Could Strike Again' Warning
The warning comes after scientists isolated genetic traces of plague from the teeth of two 1,500-year-old victims.

A strain of bubonic plague as deadly as the one that caused the Black Death could strike again without warning, scientists have warned

Researchers studied the Plague of Justinian, which killed half the world's population in the 6th century and found it was caused by a different strain to the Black Death in the 14th century.

The Justinian strain vanished from the Earth, but the Black Death gave rise to another pandemic in the late 1800s.

The study - which used genetic traces from the teeth of two 1,500-year-old victims - suggests that a new strain of plague could reappear without warning.

Both diseases were caused by the Yersinia Pestis bug, which can be spread by fleas from rats to humans.

Northern Arizona University's Dr Dave Wagner said: "We know the bacterium Y pestis has jumped from rodents into humans throughout history and rodent reservoirs of plague still exist today in many parts of the world.

"If the Justinian plague could erupt in the human population, cause a massive pandemic, and then die out, it suggests it could happen again.

"Fortunately we now have antibiotics that could be used to effectively treat plague, which lessens the chances of another large-scale human pandemic."

The Plague of Justinian is thought to have killed between 30 million and 50 million people as it swept through Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe - virtually half the world's population at the time.

Some 800 years later, the Black Death wiped out 50 million Europeans between 1347 and 1351.

The research, published by journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, revealed that the strain responsible for the Justinian plague was an evolutionary "dead end" - doing its damage and disappearing long before the Black Death struck.

The 19th century pandemic which spread across the globe from Hong Kong was a likely descendent of the more successful Black Death strain, said the scientists.

There was no molecular evidence of a link with earlier smaller epidemics such as the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and the Antonine Plague between the years 165 and 180.

These outbreaks could also represent separate, independent emergences of Y pestis strains capable of infecting humans, it is believed.

The report's Australian co-author Dr Edward Holmes said: "This study raises intriguing questions about why a pathogen that was both so successful and so deadly died out.

"One testable possibility is that human populations evolved to become less susceptible."

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Nothing like a Black Death story on a dreary, wet, dark January day to cheer you up, is there?   

Sorry Bonny.  Bad weather again for you?   

The dreaded Horizontal Sleet.

Never mind, if the Black Death did come back, people like Guedes that don't approve of killing vermin like rats, etc., would be the first to go.   

The power of positive thought.   

My son told me that in fact the Black Death has been back again and again, but hushed up, in China and Russia. It has never gone away and probably never will. I remember someone telling me that the Thamsemead Estate in East London was built on the old plague pit and that quite a few people were taken sick while living there especially on the ground floor. As I understand it, and I can't verify this, though I will say that the person who told me this is very reliable, when they dug the foundatioms for the estate they actually put the support pylons straight into the pit. LL

Oh, yuck.

Wonder what they have renamed the plague?

Think they're stuck with the Black Death brand, Lily? It's a bit like all vacuum cleaners being Hoovers, no-one is going to worry too much about which precise strain it is when they're hatching black boils.......  

   You mean like......"nothing to worry about Ms. Smith.  Just a little case of Black Plague"?   

'I had collapsed lungs, my heart stopped and my hands and feet turned black': Man who contracted the BUBONIC PLAGUE from his cat speaks about the ordeal that left him at death's door
Paul 'Steve' Gaylord's developed flu-like symptoms after a bite from his cat
Glands under the arms of Mr Gaylord swelled to the size of lemons
The welder, of Prineville, Oregon, was in a coma for 27 days
He spent nearly a month on life support as his family braced for his death
Symptoms included his hands and feet swelling up and turning black
Doctors discussed switching off life support machine before he woke up
Mr Gaylord staged a miraculous recovery from the deadly illness


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550896/Man-contracted-BUBONIC-PLAGUE-cat-speaks-ordeal-left-deaths-door.html#ixzz2sHQMaCHP
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Do NOT look at the pics while you're eating.    

That is both horrendous and alarming to think it is still happening.  However, why should it be thought it had gone away.......

Here's something new for everyone to worry about:



Will climate change bring back SMALLPOX? Siberian corpses could ooze contagious virus if graveyards thaw out, claim scientists

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2551664/Will-climate-change-bring-SMALLPOX-Siberian-corpses-ooze-contagious-virus-graveyards-thaw-claim-scientists.html#ixzz2vaELp02k
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

I do recall reading somewhere that if smallpox ever did erupt again, only older people would have any immunity at all, as no-one under a certain age has been vaccinated.

So we're all right then.   

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/black-death-rats-and-fleas-finally-in-the-clear-30138522.html

Black Death? Rats and fleas finally in the clear



Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of central London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th Century.

Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast serious doubt on "facts" that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.

Now evidence taken from the human remains found during excavations carried out as part of the construction of a rail line have suggested a different cause: only an airborne infection could have spread so fast and killed so quickly.

By extracting the DNA of the disease bacterium, Yersinia pestis, from the largest teeth in some of the skulls retrieved from the square, the scientists were able to compare the strain of bubonic plague preserved there with that which was recently responsible for killing 60 people in Madagascar.

To their surprise, the 14th-century strain, the cause of the most lethal catastrophe in recorded history, was no more virulent than today's disease. The DNA codes were an almost perfect match.

According to scientists working at Public Health England, for any plague to spread at such a pace it must have gotten into the lungs of those victims who were most malnourished and then spread by coughs and sneezes. It was therefore a pneumonic plague rather than a bubonic plague.

In other words, it was one in which infection is spread human to human, rather than when a rat flea bites a sick person and then bites another victim.

"As an explanation for the Black Death in its own right, it simply isn't good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics," said Dr Tim Brooks from Porton Down, who is to explain his theory in a Channel 4 TV documentary programme, Secret History: The Return of the Black Death, next Sunday.

In support of the growing case that this was a fast-acting, direct contagion, archaeologist Dr Barney Sloane discovered that in the medieval City of London all wills had to be registered at the Court of Hustings. The documents lead him to believe that 60 per cent of Londoners were wiped out by the disease which arrived in Britain from central Asia in the autumn of 1348.

Antibiotics can today prevent the disease from becoming pneumonic.

© Observer

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Oh, that's a game changer then.

Not feeling reassured here. But a new programme about the Black Death? What's not to like?  

bb1 wrote:Not feeling reassured here. But a new programme about the Black Death? What's not to like?  

6th April, Channel 4, in the evening. LL

Be still my beating heart! That's just before Game of Thrones comes back in the wee small hours of the 7th! Plague, swords, sorcery - and dragons! What more could a girl want?   

Enjoy! Unplug the forum and relax.   

Phew! Looks like the Holy Grail's turned up in the nick of time!



The Holy Grail? There is no doubt this chalice, which once belonged to Queen Urraca of Spain, contains the onyx goblet Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper, two Spanish historians have claimed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2593336/Jewel-encrusted-goblet-gathering-dust-tiny-Spanish-museum-touched-lips-Jesus-fact-HOLY-GRAIL-say-two-historians-book-prove-it.html

Oh dear, that old hoary myth. Jesus would not have a golden or even onyx cup to drink out of, he professed a life of humility and simpleness, so anything he drank out of would probably have been made of wood - my opinion, but also that of other historians. He was, after all, supposedly a carpenter, not a Pharoah. LL