csua.org/u/osf -> www.examiner.com/x-7160-Sacramento-Nutrition-Examiner~y2009m8d5-Bubonic-plague-is-back-again-near-where-it-first-started-in-1347
Blast From the Past: Plague Strikes China: Black Death Bacteria Can Spread From Human To Human," by Joseph Brownstein, ABC News Medical Unit, Aug. But this time, it didn't start in Mongolia where it originally began before reaching the ports of Europe through trade, but close by, in the Chinese province of Qinghai. As a result the government quarantined a small town, Ziketan, population 10,000. Three people in Qinghai have succombed to the bubonic plague as the government moved to quarantine the town. If you're looking at bacteria, you'll notice it's the species called yersinia pestis. Ironically, it's the exact species of bacteria (not a virus) that caused the 14th century bubonic plague that spread across the Silk Road to Europe. The bacteria also causes pneumonic plague that spreads from person to person just by breathing or coughing, whether the person covers the cough or not. Just by exhaling from your nostrils, you can pass the bacteria, if you are infected with it, from one person to another in any crowded, enclosed space such as a bus, train, theater, or store. The pneumonic plague doesn't need rats or fleas beause it's spread from person to person through the breath. However, it is not the threat to humans from fleas as it was historically. Then you transmit the organism to another person by coughing, sneezing, or breathing. Another way to catch it is by talking to someone while you're preparing food. The tiny, unseen droplets of spittle spray the food without you realizing that it's happening as you speak to the person next to you. Then someone eats the food, and the bacteria can get into the bloodstream if it's not destroyed by strong acids in the stomach. It's also spread by laughing next to someone, if you're infected. After the bacteria gets into your lungs, it's transmitted by coughing or other breath motion to others around you. If fleas get infected, although you don't need fleas, they will bite humans. That's how bubonic plague becomes spread as human-to-human pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague spread from human to human is much more contagious than bubonic plague that's spread from fleas on animals such as rats to humans. With pneumonic plague, your house can be clean of fleas or rats, but you catch the disease from another person directly. As the bacteria of pneumonic plague gets into the blood stream, it hooks onto the lungs and replicates. You catch it by inhaling bacteria in an aerosol environment, for example, somebody else's exhaled breath, especially in a close and crowded environment. And will quarantining the province of Qinghai really prevent people from breathing near one another or on objects that get sent through the mail or exported as food products?
China Daily), the newspaper reported, "Fearing pneumonic plague spreading across the Sino-Russian border, Russia has tightened security on part of its border with China after an outbreak in Qinghai province." Local residents also told the Associated Press that "many immigrants from other provinces have already left after they heard that another person died of the plague. A local food seller, surnamed Han, said the residents escaped with food, water and their donkeys."
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