Black Death Plague in Ziketan
Aug 5, 2009

A variant of the same Yersinia bacteria that caused the infamous" Black Death" or bubonic plague, in medieval Europe had claimed lives in the Chinese province of Qinghai, prompting the government to quarantine the town of Ziketan.

This form of the disease, known as pneumonic plague, spreads from human to human, without needing rats or fleas for transmission and allows to be transmitted by coughing.

it could potentially seed the lung tissue, and the bacteria could set up shop there," said Dr. Howard Markel, professor of the history of medicine and of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor

The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Usually thought to have started in Central Asia, it had reached the Crimea by 1346 and from there, probably on merchant ships, it spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population, reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million. That means 450 MILLION died!

Historians believe the pandemic began in China or Central Asia (one such location is Lake Issyk Kul) in the lungs of the bobac variety of marmot, spreading to fleas, to rats, and eventually to humans.

In Mediterranean Europe and Italy, the South of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, the death was probably closer to 80% to 75% of the population.




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