Latent historic and scientific ignorance remains a fixture of popular culture. The vaccine enthusiasts like to hurl terms like “plague rat” at the refuseniks. Of course, the use of such a term is a great irony. It only confirms that the user does not understand the meticulously documented spread of the plague. How, I must ask, can someone expect to understand the spread of a novel virus, where the body of knowledge is changing in real time, if they spread misinformation on one of the most well-researched pandemics in history?
You make a good point about modern misunderstandings of pandemic spread. I think that social media footsoldiers have now risen to a similar height of ignorance to join standard-issue journos. Here is an interesting tidbit about the first European Medieval plague that needs a set of explanations: Buboes were described in some patients and they frequently took days to die but occasionally recovering; while others became ill and began to cough up blood during this same time and were dead within 24 hours with characteristic blue marks on the skin (pneumonic plague). These two disease presentations swept through in this time period and within 30 months, evacuated 30% of Europe, including villages and areas far from any trade route. This is too fast for fleas to jump and too fast for gerbils or rats (or humans) to run. This behaves more as a hemorrhagic avian-spread virus. Some exist like Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), thought this is not the one. In late 1346 the Golden Horde areas north of the Caspian were in regular trade to the east. Indications are that the key reservoir of flea-borne disease seems to point to the Giant Chinese (Mongolian) gerbils, very like American prairie dogs, as the mammalian vector intermediary, that underwent some sort of ecological displacement right prior to that time. This is the kind of condition that leads to zoonoses. And hungry fleas, made hungrier by the presence of Yersinia in their throats, leapt off also-hungry gerbils and attempted to find new hosts. Problem: Until modern times the number of local plague outbreaks within the habitats of these eastern (compared with Crimea) gerbils around Tibet and Xinjiang has been scant. The first cases documented north of the Caucasus in the Khanate were in autumn 1346. By February 1347 it had spread south of the Caucasus, to Crimea, then *instantly* and almost simultaneously to Constantinople, Cyprus, Crete, Peloponneses, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Mallorca, Marseilles, Genoa, and Venice by June. This is the naval port theory of spread. But it suddenly stopped. Then took off again after summer as if there were a seasonality to it. It proceeded north into Aquitaine, British Isles, Scandinavia and back east. These are the migratory patterns of some birds even now. I don't know what the actual answer is about etiological agent, the science is unsettled though they will, try to say it is. However, I bet I could get a grant to study it if I could find a way to work in a climate charge theory of zoonotic plague that exonerates China for once. Oh wait, others already have.
There is a theory that the black death was due to mycotoxin contamination of grains, see the last section of http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/LECT11.HTM and the book Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History by Prof Matossian.
Curious that today we are chronically poisoned by a wide variety of toxins and environmental stressors...
Dorsey Armstrong, though not a biotechnical professor, actually does an evenhanded review of plague knowledge to date, but introduces some knowledge of the problems with the Fleas Theory and proposes an avian aerosol source in passing. In the end though, she needs to keep her academic job. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-black-death-the-worlds-most-devastating-plague
You make a good point about modern misunderstandings of pandemic spread. I think that social media footsoldiers have now risen to a similar height of ignorance to join standard-issue journos. Here is an interesting tidbit about the first European Medieval plague that needs a set of explanations: Buboes were described in some patients and they frequently took days to die but occasionally recovering; while others became ill and began to cough up blood during this same time and were dead within 24 hours with characteristic blue marks on the skin (pneumonic plague). These two disease presentations swept through in this time period and within 30 months, evacuated 30% of Europe, including villages and areas far from any trade route. This is too fast for fleas to jump and too fast for gerbils or rats (or humans) to run. This behaves more as a hemorrhagic avian-spread virus. Some exist like Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), thought this is not the one. In late 1346 the Golden Horde areas north of the Caspian were in regular trade to the east. Indications are that the key reservoir of flea-borne disease seems to point to the Giant Chinese (Mongolian) gerbils, very like American prairie dogs, as the mammalian vector intermediary, that underwent some sort of ecological displacement right prior to that time. This is the kind of condition that leads to zoonoses. And hungry fleas, made hungrier by the presence of Yersinia in their throats, leapt off also-hungry gerbils and attempted to find new hosts. Problem: Until modern times the number of local plague outbreaks within the habitats of these eastern (compared with Crimea) gerbils around Tibet and Xinjiang has been scant. The first cases documented north of the Caucasus in the Khanate were in autumn 1346. By February 1347 it had spread south of the Caucasus, to Crimea, then *instantly* and almost simultaneously to Constantinople, Cyprus, Crete, Peloponneses, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Mallorca, Marseilles, Genoa, and Venice by June. This is the naval port theory of spread. But it suddenly stopped. Then took off again after summer as if there were a seasonality to it. It proceeded north into Aquitaine, British Isles, Scandinavia and back east. These are the migratory patterns of some birds even now. I don't know what the actual answer is about etiological agent, the science is unsettled though they will, try to say it is. However, I bet I could get a grant to study it if I could find a way to work in a climate charge theory of zoonotic plague that exonerates China for once. Oh wait, others already have.
Fascinating points. It gives new meaning to the bird beak masks doctors wore.
There is a theory that the black death was due to mycotoxin contamination of grains, see the last section of http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/LECT11.HTM and the book Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History by Prof Matossian.
Curious that today we are chronically poisoned by a wide variety of toxins and environmental stressors...
Fascinating, thx. Is there a good source with more info on the Medieval plague?
Dorsey Armstrong, though not a biotechnical professor, actually does an evenhanded review of plague knowledge to date, but introduces some knowledge of the problems with the Fleas Theory and proposes an avian aerosol source in passing. In the end though, she needs to keep her academic job. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-black-death-the-worlds-most-devastating-plague
Thanks!
rats living on rats should be fleas on rats. 3rd from last paragraph.
Woops! Thanks :)