News Medical, Health and Fitness

Soviets War Against Plague

ORIGINAL POST
Posted by Ed 5 yrs ago
“Literally tens of thousands of people were employed to just spoon poison into the burrows.”


The ancestral home of the plague, most infamous for causing Europe’s Black Death, has likely always been much farther east, in Central Asia. There, it lives in rodents, such as the marmots that make their burrows in the vast, open grasslands.

For thousands of years, the fleas that bite those rodents have also been biting people. There are 5,000-year-old Bronze Age skeletons in the region that contain traces of the bacteria that cause the plague.


And yet, for a few brief decades in the 20th century, the Soviet Union thought it could eradicate the plague. In that era of Five-Year Plans, tens of thousands of people were mobilized to poison rodents, spray DDT, and burn any grass that surviving animals might try to eat. It was a literal scorched-earth campaign. Officially, it “worked.”


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/when-soviets-tried-to-eradicate-the-plague/589570/

Please support our advertisers:
COMMENTS
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/05/sleeping/8b1fdb8f9.jpg

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/05/Screen_Shot_2019_05_15_at_7.08.09_PM/fa8d8358a.png

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/05/Screen_Shot_2019_05_16_at_10.24.19_AM/c9fed402a.png

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/05/Screen_Shot_2019_05_16_at_10.22.10_AM/172e60dc4.png

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
These Two Mutations Turned Not-so-Deadly Bacteria Into the Plague

The ancestor of the bacterium responsible for the Black Plague isn’t nearly as deadly


The bacterium that causes the Black Plague, called Yersinia pestis, has been infecting humans ever since it evolved 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. But its ancestor, Y. pseudotuberculosis, only causes an illness similar to scarlet fever. Most people recover from an Y. pseudotuberculosis infection after a few weeks.


The Plague, of course, is far more deadly. Now, researchers have pinpointed two mutations that helped Y. pestis make the leap from a passing illness to a killer.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-two-mutations-turned-not-so-deadly-bacteria-mass-murdering-one-180955816/

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/eS7zvhCkjOfN_lt5fOqCuSNNRYw=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/7b/35/7b351bc6-c1d0-476a-9c28-d72dc6f8086e/1024px-yersinia_pestis.jpg

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
Bubonic Plague Strikes In Mongolia: Why Is It Still A Threat?

The medieval plague known as the Black Death is making headlines this month.

In Mongolia, a couple died of bubonic plague on May 1 after reportedly hunting marmots, large rodents that can harbor the bacterium that causes the disease, and eating the animal's raw meat and kidneys – which some Mongolians believe is good for their health.

This is the same illness that killed an estimated 50 million people across three continents in the 1300s. Nowadays, the plague still crops up from time to time, although antibiotics will treat it if taken soon after exposure or the appearance of symptoms.

Left untreated, the plague causes fever, vomiting, bleeding and open, infected sores — and can kill a person within a few days.

The ethnic Kazakh couple died in Bayan-Ulgii, Mongolia's westernmost province bordering Russia and China. It is not clear what treatment they received, if any.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/07/721167330/bubonic-plague-strikes-in-mongolia-why-is-it-still-a-threat

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/05/07/flea3_wide-29160f6542e4f85bee8a4b37f89321eeffb36143-s1500-c85.jpg

Please support our advertisers:
Ed 5 yrs ago
Black Plague Death Pit Dug Up in London

Dug up during London construction, the bodies of those killed by the black plague


In the middle of the 14th century, the black plague hit London, killing in a year and a half as many as 40,000 people. “There were so many dead that Londoners had to dig mass graves,” says the Museum of London.


In some of the trenches, the bodies were piled on top of each other, up to five deep. Children’s bodies were placed in the small spaces between adults. By 1350 the Black Death had killed millions of people, possibly half the population of the known world.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/black-plague-death-pit-dug-up-in-london-3355927/?no-ist

Please support our advertisers:

< Back to main category



Login now

OTHER ASIAXPAT SITES:

Ad