Comment

Seth Meyers: Mary Trump Calls Donald a "Loser" After He Sues Her Over Tax Documents

197
A hollow voice says: Abort SCOTUS9/24/2021 8:54:41 am PDT

re: #191 Jay C

WRT to the “Black Death” thing, if memory serves*, a few years back, someone unearthed a mass grave in (?England?) which could be reliably dated to the mid-14th-Century Plague time, and they were able to extract DNA samples which proved a Yersinia pestis infection. To the point, I believe, where they were able to identify the specific (extinct) strain of Yp, via comparison with modern types of the bacterium still extant (bubonic plague still kills, I think, 2-3 people annually in the US, a few dozen worldwide).
Though, yes, the precise method by which the Black Death was spread in medieval Europe is still under debate.

*it’s the Internet: always a debatable assertion.

There was a (hushed up) plague epidemic in San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake. Which of course spread plague far and wide with the refugees. As a result, bubonic plague now has reservoirs in western rodent species (mainly prairie dogs) although the other western rodent species can catch and spread it. That’s where most of the US casualties come from.