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Black Death, Plague or Ebola-like virus

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black death Plague or Ebola-like virus
Plague 89%  89%  [ 24 ]
Ebola-like virus 11%  11%  [ 3 ]
Total votes : 27

9CatMom
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15 May 2007, 8:31 pm

I watched a program on this subject on the Discovery Health Channel. An English physician studied the descendants of survivors of the Black Plague to study how certain people possessed phenomenal immunity to deseases of all kinds.



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16 May 2007, 6:18 am

"Plague," though we associate it with the buboe/Black death type of thing, is actually a very general term. One might correctly describe a large outbreak of anything as a plague; for instance influenza or Ebola. Just getting semantic . . . .



0_equals_true
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16 May 2007, 6:40 am

Sedaka wrote:
Diamonddavej wrote:
No, I think it was an Ebola like virus. There is new research that supports this interesting idea, the symptoms of Ebola are very similar to the middle ages description of plague. Also...

Quote:
Recent scientific and historical investigations have led some researchers to doubt the long-held belief that the Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time.


but do you even know what ebola is? it come from monkeys............ AFRICA and it was way more recent

edit: you could catch the plague by a variety of ways... other than just rats... in fact, one of the reasons it was so deteremental had more to do with high city populations (close lviving quarters) than anything else.


They haven't found the reservoir of ebola. It is now thought unlikely to have come from monkeys. Monkeys die too soon to be a reservoir. There is a theory it might be bats. Was talking to a microbiologist about it, several weeks ago.



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16 May 2007, 6:42 am

Diamonddavej wrote:
The fleas need rodents and cannot live on other animals; they bit other animals by mistake and that way can spread disease. Other animals have partial immunity to fleas. They need rodents as a host, only then can they reproduce and multiply.

I'm sorry but flees can live on other animals



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16 May 2007, 8:23 am

There are different types of fleas...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea

Each having different hosts.

It's an interesting theory that guy had about it being more like an Ebola type virus when talking about how Iceland has no rats... but it doesn't explain the part where once someone has the plague, it could be spread through saliva from people coughing, etc.



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16 May 2007, 9:41 am

"Experts still dispute the cause of the Balck Death, but most follow the traditional theory that the bubonic plague was the most likely culprit...However, there are problems with the traditional theory that the Black Death was caused by bubonic plague. The Black Death spread much more rapidly than from person to person than the bubonic plague does in modern epidemics, and many of the reported symptoms from the fourteenth century do not match the symtoms observed in modern plague victims. It is distinctly possible that the cause of the Black Death was a disease unknown to us or one that has changed over time."
-Levack, Brian. p.206-207.

This is a quote from my college Western Civilization text book.


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16 May 2007, 9:46 am

0_equals_true wrote:
Sedaka wrote:
Diamonddavej wrote:
No, I think it was an Ebola like virus. There is new research that supports this interesting idea, the symptoms of Ebola are very similar to the middle ages description of plague. Also...

Quote:
Recent scientific and historical investigations have led some researchers to doubt the long-held belief that the Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time.


but do you even know what ebola is? it come from monkeys............ AFRICA and it was way more recent

edit: you could catch the plague by a variety of ways... other than just rats... in fact, one of the reasons it was so deteremental had more to do with high city populations (close lviving quarters) than anything else.


They haven't found the reservoir of ebola. It is now thought unlikely to have come from monkeys. Monkeys die too soon to be a reservoir. There is a theory it might be bats. Was talking to a microbiologist about it, several weeks ago.


im tryin to remember what that book said it was.... or postulated... lol it's been a while


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16 May 2007, 9:51 am

when things are put in perspective to modern time, I always have to wonder how vaccinations effect it, how population has changed it, and simply how doctors deal with bites of any sort anymore. We have so many medications and such, I really wonder how quickly something would wipe us all out if we didn't have those available to us from birth-starting with immunization shots. Though they are for other things of course, I wonder what aspects of them can effect other things.

I'm sure it could easily be debated, I mean, everyone has a different outlook on a lot of things. So there's bound to be others who disagree, but without knowing for sure, you can't really say one way or the other. Would it have wiped out everyone as quickly if they had this many docs and were getting shots all the time to prevent things? Did it start as something that appears to be a common flu or cold type thing these days, or something they give antibiotics for now... hmmm... Some of the things they give us antibiotics for these days can easily become VERY serious matters, and over time people do develop immunities to more common things. It's definitely something to wonder about, I'm just meaning it's not impossible that it happened by means of travel and such with it getting brought back and forth.

If I get even a slight flu bug, everyone in my house is coughing and hacking within one or 2 days usually. It's interesting to think about how it could have spread so fast.



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16 May 2007, 10:01 am

KRIZDA88 wrote:
"Experts still dispute the cause of the Balck Death, but most follow the traditional theory that the bubonic plague was the most likely culprit...However, there are problems with the traditional theory that the Black Death was caused by bubonic plague. The Black Death spread much more rapidly than from person to person than the bubonic plague does in modern epidemics, and many of the reported symptoms from the fourteenth century do not match the symtoms observed in modern plague victims. It is distinctly possible that the cause of the Black Death was a disease unknown to us or one that has changed over time."
-Levack, Brian. p.206-207.

This is a quote from my college Western Civilization text book.


Levack pretty much sums up the debate here. Basically WE DON'T KNOW for sure what it was. conditions back then were so much different than they are now. and it's possible the desease strain that caused the Black Death no longer exists, maybe modern medical practices and hygeine wiped it out and we didn't even realize it.


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-Bigfoot IS blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer?s
fault. He's a large, out-of-focus monster, and that's extra scary to me.

-If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?


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16 May 2007, 10:41 am

0_equals_true wrote:
Sedaka wrote:
Diamonddavej wrote:
No, I think it was an Ebola like virus. There is new research that supports this interesting idea, the symptoms of Ebola are very similar to the middle ages description of plague. Also...

Quote:
Recent scientific and historical investigations have led some researchers to doubt the long-held belief that the Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time.


but do you even know what ebola is? it come from monkeys............ AFRICA and it was way more recent

edit: you could catch the plague by a variety of ways... other than just rats... in fact, one of the reasons it was so deteremental had more to do with high city populations (close lviving quarters) than anything else.


They haven't found the reservoir of ebola. It is now thought unlikely to have come from monkeys. Monkeys die too soon to be a reservoir. There is a theory it might be bats. Was talking to a microbiologist about it, several weeks ago.


I've always suspected it came from bats, since Richard Preston suggested it in "The Hot Zone." He wrote about how they tested several animals for the virus, but never found it. Bats were the only animals they couldn't test because there are too many different bat varieties.



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16 May 2007, 11:16 am

Miranda wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
Sedaka wrote:
Diamonddavej wrote:
No, I think it was an Ebola like virus. There is new research that supports this interesting idea, the symptoms of Ebola are very similar to the middle ages description of plague. Also...

Quote:
Recent scientific and historical investigations have led some researchers to doubt the long-held belief that the Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time.


but do you even know what ebola is? it come from monkeys............ AFRICA and it was way more recent

edit: you could catch the plague by a variety of ways... other than just rats... in fact, one of the reasons it was so deteremental had more to do with high city populations (close lviving quarters) than anything else.


They haven't found the reservoir of ebola. It is now thought unlikely to have come from monkeys. Monkeys die too soon to be a reservoir. There is a theory it might be bats. Was talking to a microbiologist about it, several weeks ago.


I've always suspected it came from bats, since Richard Preston suggested it in "The Hot Zone." He wrote about how they tested several animals for the virus, but never found it. Bats were the only animals they couldn't test because there are too many different bat varieties.


Yep that's right about 20% of mammals apparently. I'd imagine there is a number undiscovered species still.



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16 May 2007, 12:10 pm

There's good evidence that the Black Death was a virus. It's epidemiology doesn't follow that of a non-viral epidemic. This is something that has been brought up by a few epidemiologists but the orthodox view states that the Black death was bubonic plague and most epidemiologists won't listen to another view on the matter.
Most unscientific.