Is the bubonic plague still around?

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I was brushing up on the black plague today after thinking of the South Park with it... just realized it's aroundjust less common. But the fact you could have it and not know scares me and I have a phobia of diseases, kinda.

In the eastern coast of America, I wonder and ask fellow Asperger people here... do you think the plague is still a risk or something that won't happen unless reported in the news? Please answer as I don't want to have opinions alone here.

In countries in extreme proverty it still exists. Nothing we will have to worry about. With this anyway.

Forgive me for sounding stupid but...so my coldish fever feeling, stuffed nose, and odd sense of smell (everything smelled like a bad smelling steak I tried to eat for a bit) aren't symptoms?

Yeah that's half kidding half...actual curiosity as I still am trying to figure out if I'm sick or just allergies. Yeah.

EDIT: Accidental double post >_>

It keeps showing up in New Mexico, a few cases a year, but it is now very treatable.

What you describe is a cold, worse we call flu, but it is all a virus, jumping from human to human. Just started back to school? There is no real treatment, hot shower, chicken soup, gatoraid, rest and an extra blanket.

The Plauge causes Buboes, large swellings, usually along the lymphs, a half golfball, black, buboes, hence Bubonic, and black, hence Black Death.

isnt that plague the result of overcrowding + poor sanitation? Sounds odd that in the US their have been cases, are you sure about that? I would think the CDC would ensure something like that never happens in the USA, but of course, im only assuming and lack actual facts.

Actually, while hiking in the Tahoe area, I came across a sign that said that I was entering a plague infested area, warning me to stay away from rodents, and urging me to bring the subject up with my doctor if I ended up ill afterwards. Suffice it to say nothing happened (and if something would have happened, it's pretty easily treated these days).

Also, I think there's some debate over whether the Black Death of 1348 was the same thing we now call the plague. Wikipedia has something on it, I'm sure.

Inventor is correct. Several cases of plague are treated each year in the western states of the USA.

Plague is a naturally occurring disease amongst rodent fleas. The CDC actually does monitor the spread of plague in a capture-and-release program with prairie dogs and a few other rodents in several western states. The disease is spread through the fleas moving from hosts. So sanitation and close proximity are not causes, but those conditions would certainly create an environment advantageous to its spread by fleas.

Also, I would suggest that anyone wanting additional information visit the CDC website as opposed to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is no longer reliable.

Plague is a catch-all term for AIDS, EBOLA, MAD COW DISEASE and the older ones...tuberculosis, malaria, bubonic plague which
long believed to be deleted are making a comeback in some areas. In 1992, in the Mid-west, there was an incident of a plague
called, "Hantavirus" which is carried by rodents. Anyone remember back in the early 1990s there was an expressed caution about
sweeping out your summer camps with a broom after the mice had been comfortably living in them all winter long?

Most plagues (viruses) exist only in commercial and private laboratories like the CDC. However, back on August 8, 2007, there was
an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Normandy, England on a farm just four miles from the Pirbright vaccine laboratory and
believed to have spread by human movement. Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious disease and nothing you want to come in contact with.

With this war on terrorism, the greatest "scare" is that some rouge country, like North Korea, Iran or Syria could likely obtain
some kind of virus and infect the world's food or water sources...resulting in the deaths of millions of people.
Remember the scare of Anthrax found in the Postal Offices a few years ago?

at one point in time, the english govornment decided to double the time between trash pickups at residential houses. this was done as an effort to encurage the brits to reduce recycle reuse but they just left more garbage outside of their houses instead. this caused the population of mice and rats to rise and there were some isolated cases of bubonic plauge as a result.

the bubonic plauge was caused by complete ignorance of the cause of desiese. other factors included urbanization, and maybe the virus mutated into a more contagious strain.

there is a mutation in a single gene that causes some people to be completely immune to AIDS and bubonic plauge. people who are directly desended from the people who survived the bubonic plauge are more likely to have this mutation. this gene is also more common in areas that have a high occurence of AIDS such as southeast asia. the solution to the aids epidemic is straight forward. gene therapy could implant the gene that causes immunity to both desieses. the genetic vaccination, while high tech, would be very cheap after a large initial invesment because the desired gene would be carried by a virus.

correction, i think bubonic plauge spread to europe from asia

correction, i think bubonic plauge spread to europe from asia

If you're white, chances are that you have a gene that is resistant to the plague.

Are you serious or is that a white power joke?

I'm serious. The people that didn't die from it had some sort of genetic immunity. So if your heritage is from somewhere that didn't have a plague epidemic, then chances are you're still susceptible.

First off, not all white people have the genes that make them resistant to plague (and, incidentally, HIV as well iirc); not all areas were hard enough hit by the plague to weed out the non-resistant people, and in addition heterozygosity provided some resistance and allowed non-resistant genes to 'sneak' through and start mix-and-matching in the population again.

that's not technically correct; in common parlance one can have a 'plague' of locusts, a 'plague' of sand, or whatever, but medically 'plague' refers to the specific bacterial organism Yersinia pestis.



that was an epidemic, not a plague.



That is not correct. Yersinia pestis,(a bacterium, not a virus) as already stated by other posters here, is endemic in the ground squirrel population in the American southwest, and probably in other areas of the world as well. Tetanus (another bacterium) is found in soil around the world. Botulism (another bacterium) can turn up in anaerobic conditions (think: sealed cans, foil-wrapped burritos, etc) in anyone's kitchen. Anthrax (another bacterium) is endemic in the middle east. (Note that none of these diseases would be treatable with antibiotics if they were viruses).



foot-and-mouth is a disease of pigs and cattle. And, yes, it is a nasty bug for pigs and cattle.



the interesting thing about the post office anthrax scare was that it was weaponized anthrax spores (ie, designed to aerosolize and infect the lungs more readily), according to the intelligence agencies. It wasn't just any old anthrax one could find on a wool persian carpet fresh from the mid-east. Somewhat reassuring was that very few people got sick, despite the fact that this was a form of anthrax specifically designed to make lots of people sick.