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Apparently bubonic plague has broken out in Madagascar, 143 dead in only a few days and the story is only just reaching the press.
This is scary stuff as it is already spreading my some accounts, and the last ebola outbreak didnt reach a death toll of over a hundred for some time.
The plague may have reached mainland Africa as several countries bordering the Indian ocean have been put on alert.
Again the last Ebola outbreak never spread that quickly.
Nasty.



Anyway, nothing Dakka can do, so:
Time for some awesome fashion returns.




Anyway and now for the surreal part. I learned about the above from this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/tourist-thrown-off-cruise-ship-in-row-over-cancelled-stops/ar-BBENSoD?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=mailsignout

It appears that a French guy being thrown off a cruise ship is the actual story, not that the destinations were canceled due to an outbreak of the Black Death.
The above article was making the round before news articles on the actual plague.
Clicked the article curious about why a tourist was kicked off a ship this time, after all it happens a lot. then noticed casual remarks about the reason amongst the 'important' news, after a WTF I did some Googling....

The nice thing about the black death is that it's caused by Yersinia Pestis, which still isn't immune to antibiotics. Much easier to treat than ebola.

This kicked off at the beginning of October (the day before I flew out of Madagascar - luckily I wasn't in the capital for those last couple of days). It made the Guardian in the UK at the time, and IIRC the BBC not long after.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/02/plague-claims-20-lives-in-madagascar-amid-warnings-over-rapid-rise-in-cases
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41537193

It's endemic in the country - the only thing of note is that it's flared up this year, not that it's occurred at all. Apparently this time round it's mostly pneumonic plague, which is spread through the air by coughing.

Be careful in the southwestern USA, by the way:

The bubonic plague still kills dozens a year in Africa. So this isn't 'special' enough to make the news. Dead people in Africa or Asia just sadly don't grab headlines. Shouldn't become to problematic with professional care as AlmightyWalrus says.

Just as long as it doesn’t develop antibiotic resistance...

So what you are saying is that the Frenchman kicked off cruiser liner for complaining is the main story here?

Huh, I wasn't aware this was a regular thing there. ...Because Madagascar needs more problems.

 Orlanth wrote:




Anyway, nothing Dakka can do, so:
Time for some awesome fashion returns.

What do you mean "returns"? This went out of fashion? Black is always in, it's timeless!

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
This kicked off at the beginning of October (the day before I flew out of Madagascar - luckily I wasn't in the capital for those last couple of days). It made the Guardian in the UK at the time, and IIRC the BBC not long after.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/02/plague-claims-20-lives-in-madagascar-amid-warnings-over-rapid-rise-in-cases
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41537193

It's endemic in the country - the only thing of note is that it's flared up this year, not that it's occurred at all. Apparently this time round it's mostly pneumonic plague, which is spread through the air by coughing.

Be careful in the southwestern USA, by the way:

I don't worry about the plague. The plague worries about me.

Plague is a relatively trivial disease for modern medicine and sanitation. Plus most people in modern society are descendants of survivors of the last worldwide outbreak and carry immunities. Its mostly a danger for previously isolated populations, like Madagascar.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plague is a relatively trivial disease for modern medicine and sanitation. Plus most people in modern society are descendants of survivors of the last worldwide outbreak and carry immunities. Its mostly a danger for previously isolated populations, like Madagascar.

European ancestry comes in handy, hardy and strong end of the gene pool souls before us.

Africa has regular outbreaks, and it never was wiped out. They rarely effect ernough people to ever make the news and are considered just one of the local problems.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The bubonic plague still kills dozens a year in Africa. So this isn't 'special' enough to make the news. Dead people in Africa or Asia just sadly don't grab headlines. Shouldn't become to problematic with professional care as AlmightyWalrus says.

Yeah I'm always seeing stories about little pockets of plague kicking off here and there, usually in the developing world. Plague has never gone away, really.

While no longer much of a danger for us in Europe (or its colonial descendants, though even in the US people are still dying of it), plague is still a very deadly disease for people in much of the rest of the world, and one that has proven really hard to eradicate. There is still no medicine for the plague, and its most deadly form is as infectious as the common cold, so God save us all if it ever develops antibiotic immunity...
In fact, one case of immune Yersinia Pestis bacteria has already been reported in Madagascar. Not to mention that the Soviet Union and the US both have deliberately developed immune strains of pneumonic plague to use as weapons...

You realize you just said that there was no cure and that there was a cure in the same sentence, yes?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
You realize you just said that there was no cure and that there was a cure in the same sentence, yes?

My bad, I should have written vaccine. By cure I meant something that permanently 'solves' the disease.

 jhe90 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plague is a relatively trivial disease for modern medicine and sanitation. Plus most people in modern society are descendants of survivors of the last worldwide outbreak and carry immunities. Its mostly a danger for previously isolated populations, like Madagascar.

European ancestry comes in handy, hardy and strong end of the gene pool souls before us.

Africa has regular outbreaks, and it never was wiped out. They rarely effect ernough people to ever make the news and are considered just one of the local problems.

Not just European. Native Americans, Asians, and Africans also largely have resistances to the disease because it burnt through those areas. It only keeps cropping up in populations that were isolated from when the plague swept through initially and/or have poor hygiene and medicinal access.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plague is a relatively trivial disease for modern medicine and sanitation. Plus most people in modern society are descendants of survivors of the last worldwide outbreak and carry immunities. Its mostly a danger for previously isolated populations, like Madagascar.

European ancestry comes in handy, hardy and strong end of the gene pool souls before us.

Africa has regular outbreaks, and it never was wiped out. They rarely effect ernough people to ever make the news and are considered just one of the local problems.

Not just European. Native Americans, Asians, and Africans also largely have resistances to the disease because it burnt through those areas. It only keeps cropping up in populations that were isolated from when the plague swept through initially and/or have poor hygiene and medicinal access.

q

Yeah, a few areas are more vulnerable, their lack of infrastructure and level of medical and general civil systems are not very advanced in some places. Old plagues and others never died just we made it harder for the conditions for a outbreak or vaccinated some into low risk that only pip up once every few years.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The bubonic plague still kills dozens a year in Africa. So this isn't 'special' enough to make the news. Dead people in Africa or Asia just sadly don't grab headlines. Shouldn't become to problematic with professional care as AlmightyWalrus says.

It’s not to do with location or media bias, but it’s a dog bites man story. Flu kills many people every year in Europe and North America, but we don’t hear about it on the news. Same with bubonic plague where it is endemic. It brakes out from time to time, a few people die. It’s not news worth. An average of 7 people a yeah catch it in the US but it’s also not on the news. It’s easy to treat and the main reason for deaths is lack of access to medical help, which in the areas there are deaths is far more of the issue than the bug that causes it. People in these areas die of many more things with the same basic reason.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The bubonic plague still kills dozens a year in Africa. So this isn't 'special' enough to make the news. Dead people in Africa or Asia just sadly don't grab headlines. Shouldn't become to problematic with professional care as AlmightyWalrus says.

It’s not to do with location or media bias, but it’s a dog bites man story. Flu kills many people every year in Europe and North America, but we don’t hear about it on the news. Same with bubonic plague where it is endemic. It brakes out from time to time, a few people die. It’s not news worth. An average of 7 people a yeah catch it in the US but it’s also not on the news. It’s easy to treat and the main reason for deaths is lack of access to medical help, which in the areas there are deaths is far more of the issue than the bug that causes it. People in these areas die of many more things with the same basic reason.

Funny part is, flu season is a national news topic here Point is that a guy who got thrown off a cruise ship does get an article but not dozens dying. Still kinda weird. I realize the reasons behind it, beyond normalization that you describe its also distance. Its just harder to care for most people the more distant events are. The Houston floods were a good example, most people in the West could understand and have an idea what its like cause our lives are so similar, but SE Asia's flood got less attention. Its called cultural proximity or something like that. It technically is location and media bias, but more because its not what the audience cares too much about. So its public bias steering media to an extent.

Understand that though Yersinia Pestis doesn't really mutate that much, it's a tough little bastard but its a very easy brat to control. You can beat it just by having a healthy diet, a relatively clean living space, or basic medical care (something our ancestors didn't have a lot of), it persists because it manages to travel through population groups that don't have those three things that have become so common for so many people they take them completely for granted. Most significantly, plague can be carried by animals in a semi-benign manner for decades before making the leap into the human population. You can literally set a calendar by when and where an outbreak will occur in places that still deal with it because it happens very predictably (the Ottoman Empire battle plague outbreaks for most of its history and did mark the dates for when they knew the outbreaks would occur!). It's not really a matter of resistance or not, but of controlling environmental risks and hazards. Sanitation and food preparation in most of the developed world is such that even when the bacteria is present, it gets killed before it can enter the human body, but in particularly poor countries, or even rural/poorer areas of the developed world it still happens.

Th real issue is not so much that it exists as that it occurs in nature where any would be germ lab can pick it up, weaponize it, and let fly.

And someone like me can do it in their basement. Please consider the ramifications of this.