And Now (drum roll) The Plague in China

Suspected case of BUBONIC PLAGUE registered in China, days after Mongolian outbreak

Suspected case of BUBONIC PLAGUE registered in China, days after Mongolian outbreak
A suspected case of bubonic plague has been registered in China’s north, according to local health authorities. The news comes after two similar cases were detected in neighboring Mongolia.

The case was registered at a hospital in China’s Inner Mongolia region, its health commission said in a statement on Sunday.

This prompted a third-level warning of a potential epidemic in the region. The alert comes into force immediately and will be in place until the end of this year. It’s believed the patient in question is suffering from the bubonic form, which causes swollen lymph nodes, and is considered to be the most easily treated variant of the disease.

The plague also has a pneumonic and an extra-deadly septicemic form that can kill a victim within a day.

Earlier this week, two people also tested positive for the bubonic plague in neighboring Mongolia.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, the potential return of the dreaded plague is definitely the last thing the world needs. So far, Covid-19 has infected nearly 11.5 million people, killing more than 530,000 of them.

Yet the toll from coronavirus is dwarfed by that of the plague, which has caused pandemics at least three times in the course of history. It has an extremely high mortality rate, at around 95 percent, and caused the deaths of tens of millions before healthcare evolved enough to treat it. The last such pandemic was in the 19th century, and it hit China and India particularly hard.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 cases of the plague are still registered worldwide each year, with many of them originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

from:    https://www.rt.com/news/493871-china-suspected-bubonic-plague/

And Check out  Dr. Joseph Farrell’s News and Views From the Nefarium for July 8, 2020 where he discusses this article:

Cracking the Genome of the Black Death

Scientists crack Black Death’s genetic code


By Kate KellandPosted 2011/10/12 at 2:23 pm EDT

LONDON, Oct. 12, 2011 (Reuters) — Scientists have mapped out the entire genetic map of the Black Death, a 14th century bubonic plague that killed 50 million Europeans in one of the most devastating epidemics in history.

A Wayson stain of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, responsible for the plague that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. REUTERS/CDC

The work, which involved extracting and purifying DNA from the remains of Black death victims buried in London’s “plague pits,” is the first time scientists have been able to draft a reconstructed genome of any ancient pathogen.

Their result — a full draft of the entire Black Death genome — should allow researchers to track changes in the disease’s evolution and virulence, and lead to better understanding of modern-day infectious diseases.

Building on previous research which showed that a specific variant of the Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis) bacterium was responsible for the plague that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, a team of German, Canadian and American scientists went on to “capture” and sequence the entire genome of the disease.

“The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide. Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague,” said Hendrik Poinar, of Canada’s McMaster University, who worked with the team.

“With a better understanding of the evolution of this deadly pathogen, we are entering a new era of research into infectious disease.”

Major technical advances in DNA recovery and sequencing have dramatically expanded the scope of genetic analysis of ancient specimens, opening up new ways of trying to understand emerging and re-emerging infections.

Experts say the direct descendants of the same bubonic plague still exist today, killing around 2,000 people a year.

A virulent strain of E. coli bacteria which caused a deadly outbreak of infections in Germany and France earlier this year was also found to contain DNA sequences from plague bacteria.

to read more, go to:    http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre79b5d2-us-plague-genome/