I had an ugly thought recently regarding the homeless problem in California. There were Typhus outbreaks this past summer, and I am not sure if that is still ongoing.
The homeless population is defecating in the streets and on the sidewalks. These are similar conditions to the open sewers that were common during the Black Plague. We know there are plenty of rats and fleas from the Typhus.
Plague is endemic to prairie dog populations in the Southwest. It is not a great leap to think that plague can get started in the CA homeless population. There are always a few cases of plague each year. If the homeless and sanitation problems in CA continue or get worse it is only a matter of time.
There have been
some recent plague in China too. Much higher population. Ditto in the Congo. It is rather ‘common’ worldwide but only in small case numbers.
Rats and fleas [which will move to other animals and humans, though fleas prefer their own variety of mammal]. Pnuemonic spread is the most dangerous.
China will just order the slaughter of all pets [since pretty much everything else has been eaten/non-existent]. Congo doesn’t have the ability to do more than set up antibiotic clinics — to much wild space.
California won’t order animal slaughter in the cities. Probably will put rat traps up. [if they haven’t]. They will just treat the homeless as they get sick. Some of the homeless will functioning brain cells will go somewhere else — which could spread it further from the outbreak point.
One thing to note about the plague of the Black Death – most of the deaths came from pneumonic plague, not plague from flea bites. Pneumonia from the plague is almost as bad as Anthrax pneumonia, in that you can be well past treatment when the Docs figure out what it is you have.
Y. pestis can be misidentified by some (if not most) automated bacterial ID systems, which means that the patient might not be isolated rapidly, the microbiology staff might not take the correct precautions in the lab, the nursing staff or family members might become secondary victims.
Just like the measles, chicken pox, mumps and other childhood diseases that have become rare (or should have become rare) a lot of young doctors are unable to recognize Y. pestis infections rapidly. Doctors aren’t taught to see things the way they once were. There is, instead, always a test or an image or something that can be ordered, instead of using a good patient history and common sense.
Cities historically had always been disease and population sinks. They had negative population growth and required regular emigration from the surrounding agricultural countryside. With that emigration and trade which also carried disease folks were dying all the time. Perhaps we are returning to that standard.
In the Middle Ages, wealthier people in England would move to their country estates when there was an outbreak. The millionaire Libs in Cali can tolerate the homeless, but if they start spreading the Black Death they’ll all probably end up quarantined in an old military base. Plague epidemics mainly affected areas with high population densities and areas that depended on grain for food. When the rats exhausted the grain stores, they’d die and the fleas would move to humans. There is a reason why the rich in the Middle Ages had country homes to raise their families.
Some might sat; “Its treatable with antibiotics.. not an issue unless it outpaces antibiotics.”
There is a problem with that thinking relative to treating viruses. We are outpacing antibiotics. At some point, there will be something that kicks off that is antibiotic-resistant, (think MERSA). It is only a matter of time.