Selections from the Yersinia Pestis keyword, sorted:
I thought it was the fleas on the rats that spread the disease?
so what is this saying?
It wasn’t rats, bit it might have been Asian rats, and temporarily European rat reservoirs?
Or it was Asians. Probably conducting gain of function studies on the plague virus. And funded by some well meaning European country, since the US wasn’t around yet to provide the stupidity.
They forgot to wear their plague masks?
Rome and Florence supposedly had 50 to 75% mortality rates, while Milan had a 15% mortality rate. The reason why was that Milan leaders sealed and bricked up affected households basically leaving them to die.
Have no idea how accurate the history is.
“But plague could have also been repeatedly reintroduced from Asia.”
Yes, and on a contemporary note, one of the key vectors for the bubonic plague entering Europe was through what is today Ukraine/Crimea, since trade goods from China would route through there to the Genoese trading posts for shipment to the Mediterranean.
“slow-moving rats may not have played the critical role...”
Rats do not move slow when we are transporting them on ships...
There is a good book called “Justinians Flea” (cannot remember the author) regarding the emergence of the plague in Constantinople. The premise is that rats and their fleas arrived in Constantinople on grain ships from Egypt. The plague decimated the population of Constantinople. Rats being opportunistic hitchhiked on ships and other transportation to all corners of Europe creating the pandemic we call the “Black Death”.
This is the first I’ve heard that rats are slow moving in their reproduction and spreading out. If the food is there THEY are there.
Cats (and some dogs) ate the rats, got fleas from the rats, spread it through the households.
Don’t know if mites on birds carry the plague, but if so, that might explain a more rapid dispersal of the plague?
I suspect it was a range of infectious diseases, and Y. Pestis wasn’t the only player.
It is also interesting that Y. Pestis might have beat Columbus to the new world. Lots of rather interesting implications on that.
Oh, sorry. I get my slimy disease carrying rodents confused.
So I was right to hate the gerbils my college roommate had living in the dorm with us. And to hate the roommate, too.
Interesting that some credit hygiene with ending the Black Death yet ‘science’ appears to have never analyzed transmission by feces, (animal, e.g., rodent, bird or, for that matter, flea droppings), human or otherwise (that I’ve seen).
I never believed the flea bite hypothesis, dating back to grade school. The orthodox “transmitted by the bite of a flea” is a functional blinder.
I thought it was infected fleas entering sailing vessels in Black Sea ports and exiting the vessels in Mediterranian and Altlantic ports.
I'm too lazy this morning to look it up -- was that the period when European trade with Asia ramped up?
We have been "plagued" lately by Asian Stiltgrass seeds that get into packing materials. Many foreign plants meet no resistance in a new environment and soon take over entire fields and forests. The Stiltgrass requires very expensive weedicides meant for golf courses, etc., to be eliminated from residential lawns—the usual weedicides won't cut it. Stiltgrass has spread all over our townhome neighborhood and forest park because even if one owner gets rid of it, the lawns next door and the forest trail will spread it back. Hoping it doesn't become a widespread native-plant killer like kudzu did.
That is exactly the conclusion the authors reached in a book I read about 10 years ago: Return of the Black Death by Susan Scott & Christopher Duncan.
Read the source document. This isn’t based on testing performed on live rats, this is all based on computer modeling (as is MMGW). So garbage in, garbage out. They have absolutely ZERO mechanism to validate their conclusions, which therefore are no more valid than their original hypotheses.
Saw a British program a while back that produced evidence that body lice, which there was plenty of back then, was a major reason the plague spread so quickly.
It came out from a lab in Wuhan? Dr. Fauci’s ancestors fund it... 🤓