• Question: will the Black Death ever come back to the 20th century

    Asked by Hfrbyvrtvhtbhbe to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 14 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Jun 2017:

      There are people that get plague every year. Some people in the US get infected by prairie dogs! Our existing antibiotics are very good at curing people who get infected. But some countries may not have enough medical staff to diagnose infection and/or enough antibiotics to treat all affected.

      Here is an article about plague in India in the 1990s:
      http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/24/world/thousands-flee-indian-city-in-deadly-plague-outbreak.html

    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 14 Jun 2017:

      Individual cases (sporadic infections) in people happen all the time, and Yersinia pests (the bacterium that causes plague) is endemic in wild animal populations. Modern living conditions and our ability to treat the infection with antibiotics mean that a pandemic like the Black Death of the 14th century just won’t happen again.

      A viral pandemic is still possible though. We saw one with the influenza strain in 2009 (swine ‘flu) that infected lots of people across the globe. Luckily for us all, in most people the infection wasn’t severe.

Comments