Black Death Discovered In Oregon 404
redletterdave writes "The Black Death, a strain of bubonic plague that destroyed nearly a third of Europe's entire population between 1347 and 1369, has been found in Oregon. Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague after getting bitten by a cat. The unidentified man, who is currently in his 50s, had tried to pry a dead mouse from a stray cat's mouth on June 2 when the cat attacked him. Days later, fever and sickness drove the man to check himself into Oregon's St. Charles Medical Center, where he is currently in 'critical condition.'"
Darwin in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell did he think it was a good idea to try to get the dead mouse away from the cat in the first place?
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:4, Funny)
Swoosh !
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, no, it is a general purpose word, used in print since at least 1865.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/swoosh [merriam-webster.com]
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/swoosh [reference.com]
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/swoosh [macmillandictionary.com]
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/swoosh [reverso.net]
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/swoosh [ldoceonline.com]
Not one of those dictionaries mentions Nike.
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Except the appropriate onomatopoeia is woosh.
Depends on your dialect. My native dialect is one of the many that still preserve the "wh" sound (which has always actually been /hw/ phonetically, but the usual insane English spelling rules apply ;-). It's only "woosh" if you speak one of the many dialects that has dropped yet another kind of initial /h/, the one represented in the "wh" digraph.
I'm not aware of any dialects that converted /hw/ into /sw/. But maybe the writer speaks a dialect (idiolect?) that does that. Stranger things have happened
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Shwuck off.
Hey, you speak Yiddish!
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:4, Informative)
Civil infraction 27-5 against county Code 54.2.1 Hiding your pot in a fake mouse is a mistreatment in this county.
$350.00 fine or 2 days in jail.
There is your citation, you can pay it at the county clerks office.
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It really wasn't a dead mouse. It was a bag of pot he hid under a bush so his wife wouldn't find it. You can't really tell that to the folks at the hospital.
The moral of the story is never mix pot and catnip.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
That's just like your opinion, man.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
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About 25 or 30 years ago in Toronto they had a "town forum" on one of the local super stations. The subject was about legalizing pot. Some stoner had the floor and when he got to the mic his speech went something like: "Ya heh heh heh.... Like I smoke pot you know... And like.... ... uhhh ... ... ... heh heh ... I fogot what I was gonna say... ..." then he turned around and sat down. The station this was on broadcast to all of southern Ontario, and transmitters close to the border meant a good chunk of the U.S. across Lakes Ontario and Erie. Potential audience of many millions (actual audience probably a few million since it was during the news hour... pre-internet days). A better spokesman for making weed illegal could not have been found. The panel were speechless for a minute.
Agreed, and when I hear something like this, I wonder if it wasn't intentional. It's a well known political tactic to find a subject to pretend to be on the other side in order to make a very bad case for the other side's position.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Personally i like pot from the Ozarks myself, the rich soil gives it a nice peaty overtone with a lovely aroma, almost like being in a forest, quite lovely.
LOL.
Ok. Personally, I have never experienced this "mellow" pot that you speak of. Only the super strength stuff. Even just a small puff and I was ready to go Ocean's 11 on the Keebler Elf factory.
I get your overall point though and I have a strange desire to visit the Ozarks.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Informative)
You probably mean Arthur C Clarke who many think 'invented' the geosynchronous satellite...or brought it into the public arena.
No idea if he smoked pot though.
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Actually, Arthur C. Clarke 'invented' the communication satellite, as in, he picked up on the idea that a geosynchronous satellite would be an ideal platform to bounce your radio waves off around the world. This was during the time he worked as a radar engineer in WW II.
Re:The same axiom applies. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
500 years is not evolutionarily significant. Biologically, humans have remained almost unchanged from the early days of civilization 10,000 years ago--just ask any anthropologist.
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The ONLY significant change that is measurable between generations is that of the immune system, which is by evolutionary design, as the immune system is in a constant arms race with pathogens and needs to match some of their speed of change.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
There's no way to tell whether our ancestors had "teeth" or other condom-breaking protrusions on their penises. They may or may not have, since boners don't fossilize as well as bones. Maybe we merely lost our vestigial cock-teeth. Or maybe this is where myths of vagina dentata come from--it was the women who had the condom-breaking apparatus.
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Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus christ
Can't we have an irrational flaming discussion about evolution without bringing him into it??
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
The rate of stupid isn't growing. Your exposure to them has. Technology and urbanization have brought people together so that stupidity may be experienced in full 3D as nature intended.
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Well i have proof that the general population is far stupider now than 500 years ago. But the rate of stupid started growing exponentially in 1992.
Today we have masses of drooling morons that cant even figure out how to add water to a radiator if their car was overheating, cant understand that it's bad to not look out the window of the car while driving, and has elected or supports a band of utterly evil people that want to roll back civil rights to the early 1950's.
Well you're meant to add coolant to radiators as they easily get to above 100 degrees C. In summer in Oz, the coolant in my radiator can start cold at 40+ Degrees C after being left in the sun. If you put water in a radiator you'll find the water boiling out after 5-10 mins of driving.
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If you are talking about the most recent 500 years, I would argue that advances in medicine and science make the latest 500 years far less significant than any previous period of 500 consecutive years. I would be convinced that the 500 year periods making up the "dark ages" were much more evolutionarily significant than the period in which condoms were in any manner common. According to your own link, if such knowledge and use existed prior to the 5th century AD the knowledge and practice was lost. The m
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
BIG disagree.
Medical advances allow the Genetically defective to continue to survive and reproduce. Just 100 years ago this would not have happened.
Just wait to see how fucked up as a species will will be in 500 years.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:4, Informative)
If you can survive and reproduce, you aren't genetically defective.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Seems like evolutionary pressure (h)as been applIed
You would think so, but it hasn't. Reason it out a little further and I think you'll see why. One thing condoms are useful for is not having babies until you want to. Delaying reproduction isn't the same as not reproducing. Another thing condoms are useful for is avoiding diseases, some of which could make the user permanently infertile. In the long run, condom use could make some users more reproductively successful, no
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That's why God created bananas. So you could practice proper application of a condom. Just ask any American school kid. It's part of their curriculum.
And this is why American bananas are a sterile species that reproduces only asexually. All those condoms make banana sex unproductive, so they've been selected for a means of reproduction that is productive under the conditions imposed on them by their human predators.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a 50 year old man who got into a fight with a cat over a dead mouse.
We're not talking about Paul McCartney or Michael Douglas.
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"Growing Evidence of Football Causing Brain Damage"
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"Growing Evidence of Football Causing Brain Damage"
Yes, watching too much football can definitely do damage. Trust me.
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Because it could be a weakened mouse that has eaten rat poison, and then the cat dies if not treated with vitamin K to stop the internal hemorrhage.
I've lost several cats because of this issue.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Informative)
The summary specifies it was a stray cat. Who the hell tries to pry open the mouth of a stray cat? You have no idea what kinds of bacteria, viruses, or other nasty infectious things are living in a stray cat's mouth.
Although we certainly know now.
Re:Darwin in action. (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm fortunate in that whenever my cat catches mice, she just gives it a couple of good hard whacks and eats it. None of this mummy cat try-to-show-the-kittens-how-to-hunt thing, just *thud* *munch munch munch*.
stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
1) existing in a natural state, as animals or plants; not domesticated or cultivated; wild.
2) having reverted to the wild state, as from domestication.
3) of or characteristic of wild animals; ferocious; brutal.
All three definitions equate feral with being wild, so what was the point of your pedantic nitpicking again?
Re:stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
A feral cat is a descendant of a domesticated cat that has returned to the wild. [wikipedia.org]
Have you ever seen a domesticated tiger? What about a domesticated fox [wikipedia.org]?
The difference between is mostly just a few generations of human attention. There are some more gradual changes (and numerous abrupt physical changes) at work in dogs, which creates the gap between 'feral' and 'wild' for them, but the most important alterations are purely in how the animal has been raised. Barn cats have been selected for their ability to survive and hunt, after all, for most of history. Not very pet-like traits.
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The other important difference is geography. Yes, there are wild cats that are pretty close to our domesticated cats, but they don't live in Oregon, they live in Europe; in Oregon, or Australia, they'd be considered an "invasive species".
Barn cats aren't wild either, because barns aren't natural habitats in the least. Cows aren't "wild animals" either, but they don't live inside with people either, they live on farms (which frequently also have barns, though cows don't normally live there, but horses do,
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
But for most of human history, dogs were working animals, too. The only difference is that they are (usually) too big to be allowed to gather their own food. That would be dangerous (and inconvenient, considering that they are pack hunters). That is the difference: practicality, not biology.
Dogs do go feral. In an area not very far from here there has been a pack of feral dogs, descended from escaped domestic dogs, roaming the mountains for at least 30 years. They have been spotted every few years (it is a very remote place and rough country) but their fate is uncertain now that the wolves have returned. And Dingos are of course another example of formerly-domesticated dogs returning to the wild.
Another interesting example is the domestic ferret. Evidence indicates that they have been domesticated for approximately as long as dogs and cats. And again, for most of human history they were working animals: they were (and still are) used to hunt small game. Not only that, but prior to WWII, right here in the United States, ferrets were also popular farm animals, used for keeping rats, mice, etc. out of the granaries just like cats.
But unlike both dogs and cats, and except in New Zealand (which presented very specific and unusual conditions), ferrets don't go feral. They just don't. It doesn't happen.
Re:stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says it was a cat. Cats, by definition, are not wild. Some of them may be feral, but they are never wild.
Apparently you don't live in Oregon. We have wild cats. We call them cougars or mountain lions and they can fuck your day up. They have been getting a bad rep for pouncing on mountain bikers. http://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/cougar/ [state.or.us]
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Usually, when someone says "cat", they mean felis domesticus, not a mountain lion (same thing as cougar). If they meant a mountain lion, they would have specified that.
Besides, what kind of moron would try to get a dead mouse (or anything for that matter) away from a mountain lion? Obviously, this case was about a housecat.
Finally, I live in Arizona. We have mountain lions here too, though not generally in the city. Mountain lions live all over the western US, they're not unique to Oregon. I think they
Re:stupid (Score:5, Funny)
"Girls Gone Feral" doesn't have the same ring to it, but sounds interesting for the same reasons.
Bring out your dead! (Score:5, Informative)
While an exciting headline, certain to raise the blood pressure of the angst brigade, this isn't terribly newsworthy. Bubonic plague has been found in animals (mostly prairie dogs in Colorado) for decades and apparently is the sixth case of plague in Oregon since 1995. It's easy to treat with antibiotics. The hardest part is actually thinking that Yersinia pestis is the causative organism.
Bonus points for Monty Python addicts.
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Rare, but still around. House MD had a case that turned out to be the Black Death caught from an adopted pet from Arizona about five years ago. Even rarer than lupus, and as you all know, "It's never lupus!"
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Bubonic plague has been found in animals (mostly prairie dogs in Colorado) for decades and apparently is the sixth case of plague in Oregon since 1995.
From TFA:
Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague...
Hmm... I KNEW there was something that the Portlandia folks left out when they said, "The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland...." [youtube.com]
Clown school, double-decker bicycles, and of course... bubonic plague.
(P.S. Yes, I know this case of plague didn't originate in Portland... but neither did clown school, and clowning is apparently still going on there. Elsewhere, plague is so 1390s...)
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How sure are they it's the same?
Seem legit:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/352856/20120615/octomom-2-woman-pregnant-mouth-eating-squid.htm [ibtimes.com]
"'Octomom' 2.0? Woman Gets 'Pregnant In The Mouth' After Eating Squid
By Dave Smith: Subscribe to Dave's RSS feed
June 15, 2012 5:01 PM EDT
A 63-year-old South Korean woman was shocked to learn she "became pregnant" with 12 baby squid after eating a portion of calamari."
Seem too good to be true, but it probably is.
Re:Bring out your dead! (Score:5, Insightful)
The most virulent is the pneumonic form. It can kill within days. But it is also relatively rare, even as cases of plague go. Usually it takes somewhat longer.
Biggest question... (Score:5, Informative)
Really though, from TFA:
it is treatable with antibiotics
the bacteria thrives in forests, grasslands and any wooded areas inhabited by rats and squirrels
Without the help of modern medicine, Europeans in the Middle Ages could do little to combat the plague.
So this is a bacterium that is common in the wild, which can be contracted by humans but is treatable with modern medicine. It is not as though we are facing another plague here...
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Good thing that bacteria cant become resistant to antibiotics, right?
captcha: evasion
Re:Biggest question... (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing that bacteria cant become resistant to antibiotics, right?
Bacteria that spread from human to human can evolve antibiotic resistance relatively quickly. Bacteria that spread primarily from animal to animal, especially if those animals are wild, are much less likely to evolve resistance. I don't think we are going to start giving antibiotics to prairie dogs.
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Good thing that bacteria cant become resistant to antibiotics, right?
Sure, but there is more to keep in mind when it comes to this particular infection:
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there are about seven cases of the Black Plague in the U.S. each year
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This is possibly the worst infection to evolve
Really, the worst? This is an infection that is not hard to control with quarantines, good hygiene and good sanitation -- none of which are a challenge in this century. It would be a pretty serious leap for the plague to evade all of the above.
We have better medicine
More importantly, we have better medical practices. Doctors wash their hands between seeing patients. Highly infectious patients are kept under special quarantines. Corpses are not handled without gloves. Medical instruments are carefully disposed of. These
Bring out yer dead! (Score:3)
This is hardly news. (Score:5, Informative)
Bubonic plague has been endemic (sustaining itself permanently, in this case in the animal population) in the western part of the US for years, although it is news to public health officials when a human contracts it. There was a case two years ago, also in Oregon.
The reason it doesn't sweep the nation the way it swept Europe is advances in hygiene, public health and medical treatment. Rats and fleas in the house aren't unheard of these days, but they're no longer universal. If people are getting bit by fleas they'll call the exterminator or the board of health; they won't just accept it as a fact of life. If they contract plague they'll go to the doctor who will cure it relatively easily.
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Bubonic plague has been endemic (sustaining itself permanently, in this case in the animal population) in the western part of the US for yeas...
Yep. When I was in the US southwest in the 80's they were handing out phamplets at the national parks like the grand canyon(I think I have mine tucked away somewhere still--I was a kid and thought it was kinda cool) to avoid dead animals. This really isn't news, we see a dozen or so cases of it in Canada every year from the same way.
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This really isn't news, we see a dozen or so cases of it in Canada every year from the same way.
I didn't realize it was a common thing for people to pry dead mice from the mouths of stray cats. ;)
Time to get vaccinated (Score:2)
Ive had mine in the army. I'm not worried
Obligatory LOLcat ref (Score:5, Funny)
I can has worldwide pandemic?
Re:Obligatory LOLcat ref (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Obligatory LOLcat ref (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a beautiful world we live in when we have a second spelling and dialect for what we imagine our domesticated companions are telling us... and there are spelling and grammar nazis for that dialect.
Plague?!? (Score:2)
that is all.
Oh wait, anyone else ever know that putting something like 'PPPPPLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAGUE?!?" as a comment subject produces a "filter error: Too much repetition". Isn't it reasonable to expect that a mature person who can operate a computer and engage in discussion groups well aware enough of what constitutes too much or too little repetition?
Because I can clearly say it in the message body, just not the subject. Yet, its exactly what I wanted the subject to be!
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It is reasonable to expect it, yes. But it is also reasonable to expect that the immature id10t's on this board will abuse the priviledge to post that sort of crud, so society here forbids it from being possible in the first place.
Sensationalized article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sensationalized article (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty Common Out West (Score:2)
Doctors aren't curing him (Score:2)
They've taken bets on how many days he's going to stay alive.
Come on! The guy has no insurance!
bring out your dead! (Score:2)
"I'm not dead!"
Non story (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Plague (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep, it was a 50-year-old men. People in that demographic are infamous for avoiding medical treatment until it's too late.
Re:The Plague (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, it was a 50-year-old men. People in that demographic are infamous for avoiding medical treatment until it's too late.
That is because by the time we are that old, we know that most doctors don't actually know as much as they think (meaning they tend to guess alot), and don't want to pay the high price for that.
Re:The Plague (Score:4, Funny)
Re:2012 strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
No, must be confirmation bias on your part.
Black Plague is rare, but still happens you just usually don't hear about it because it's treatable with antibiotics and preventable by controlling rodent populations - neither antibiotic treatment nor effective prevention were known in europe during the middle ages.
Re:2012 strikes again (Score:4, Funny)
Wrong, it's a new zombie strain, carried by rodents and cats from Japan; I suspect it is entirely distinct from the zombie strain seen in Florida, originating in Cuba.
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Not a big deal. (Score:2, Informative)
Exactly this. In the Southwestern US there is a case of plague every couple of years. Not a big deal unless it isn't diagnosed and treated rapidly. It probably shows up in other areas of the world as well.
Re:Not a big deal. (Score:4, Informative)
My brother-in-law is a veterinarian in southeast Utah, and he found one of those "every few years" cases of bubonic plague a few years back. He told me the same thing - a case pops up every few years.
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They plain have plague warnings at the campgrounds in southern Utah. This stuff is by no means new. It's just relatively rare and pretty localized. It's unusual enough that it fits into the "man bites dog" category of the news. No one remembers that it happened before 5 or 10 or 15 years ago and nothing came of it then either.
More than that... (Score:5, Informative)
From the linked article:
Even though there are about seven cases of the Black Plague in the U.S. each year, most cases have been in the West and the Southweset, the bacterium is considerably less fatal than it once was. According to the CDC, 1 in 7 cases are fatal, but the disease can now be treated with antibiotics.
I know, I know I'm not supposed to read the article...
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Re:2012 strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2012 strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
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That may happen, but antibiotic resistance usually happens because of overprescription, and people not following directions. Since there aren't many cases of Plague, pretty much any time it does pop up, those people are under careful care, so if there is any antibiotic resistance to it, it's probably because of "environmental antibiotics" - pets under treatment peeing excess, same for farm animals, leaching landfills, etc.
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That may happen, but antibiotic resistance usually happens because of overprescription, and people not following directions. Since there aren't many cases of Plague, pretty much any time it does pop up, those people are under careful care, so if there is any antibiotic resistance to it, it's probably because of "environmental antibiotics" - pets under treatment peeing excess, same for farm animals, leaching landfills, etc.
Antibiotic resistance usually happens because of the widespread use of sub therapeutic doses of antibiotics as a 'growth enhancer' in animal feed, and the ability of bacteria to exchange genes, even between different species of bacteria. A fairly recent example of this behavior is the EHEC strain, a strain of previously harmles e.coli bacteria that seems to have absorbed the gene for producing a deadly toxin from the dysentery bug.
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Yeah plague isn't really uncommon, there are still areas of Russia and Africa and other countries [citation needed] where plague is still a problem, mostly for livestock.
It wont really turn into the black death again, since we now have stuff like proper hygiene and antibiotics. Of course it could have been one of those super plagues the Soviets were designing [wikipedia.org] that somehow got out, if that was the case commence you panicking now.
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You forgot to add "and get off my lawn!"
Re:Black Death? no, epidemiology guesses Ebola lik (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people think it was the bubonic plague because that matches _some_ of the symptoms reported at the time and y. pestis has been found in mass graves from the period. (Obviously people who disagree are pulling out the "correlation does not equal causation" card.)
Other people believe it was ebola, anthrax, or something else because the incubation period, the rate and nature of the spread, and some of the symptoms don't match those of the modern bubonic plague.
Some people believe it was the y. pestis, but it behaved differently back then because humans had zero immunity when it was introduced, and both humans and the bacteria have had a few centuries to evolve since then.
And some people believe that it wasn't just one disease that was responsible for the black death but a number of different diseases sweeping through around the same time. They didn't know much about disease at the time, and if everyone has heard of the black death and a bunch of people get sick and die, everyone is going to blame it on the black death.
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