the same ones who gave you covid vaccine are now planning a new vaccine for the Plague.
Few docs in the USA have ever seen a case, but there are a couple eases each year on the Navajo or nearby reservations because it is carried by prairie dogs.
the usual infection is a bite and then you develop huge enlarged lymph nodes (bubos hence the name bubonic plague).
usually it is treated with common antibiotics, but this report says the bacteria is becoming resistant to them.
What is worrying is that if it goes to the lung, it can cause a pneumonia that is easily transmitted to those nearby, and can kill you within 24 hours.
The article mentions that there has been a plague vaccine for over a century:
The first plague vaccine was developed in 1897 by bacteriologist Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine, who tested it on himself. This early vaccine was widely used in British India, with an estimated 26 million doses distributed between 1897 and 1925, reducing plague mortality by 50-85%. He was hailed as the “the Jewish Jenner” (Jenner having created the smallpox vaccine), as Haffkine also developed a vaccine for cholera.
When the bubonic plague hit Bombay in October 1896 with a mortality rate double that of cholera, the Indian government asked Haffkine to assist, and he commenced work in a crude laboratory and assumed the daunting task of developing the world’s first vaccine against plague. Amazingly, working almost entirely by himself, he succeeded in developing a vaccine that was ready for testing only three months later and, again, he first tested it on himself on January 10, 1897. Soon after he announced his successful results to the authorities, plague broke out at Bombay’s Byculla House of Correction. He conducted a controlled test there, the results of which were that the majority of deaths were among the unvaccinated.
Only China and Russia have licensed a live bubonic plague vaccine, which is based on an attenuated Y. pestis strain. However, this type of vaccine is associated with some adverse effects and does not provide long-term immunity.
yup. it needs three shots and then repeated boosters.
The US Military always gave plague vaccine to soldiers being deployed to certain areas (e.g. Viet Nam). So isn't there a vaccine already?
vaccines used in the US Military is a long list, and for plague vaccine the discussion says:
There is no requirement for routine immunization. Plague vaccine is administered to personnel who are likely to be assigned to areas where the risk of endemic transmission or other exposure is high. Vaccine may not be effective in the prevention of airborne infection. The addition of antibiotic prophylaxis is recommended for such situations.
PLAGUE VACCINE Plague vaccines ** have been used since the late 19th century, but their effectiveness has never been measured precisely. Field experience indicates that vaccination with plague vaccine reduces the incidence and severity of disease resulting from the bite of infected fleas. The degree of protection afforded against primary pneumonic infection is not known. Persons exposed to plague patients who have pneumonia or to Yersinia pestis *** aerosols in the laboratory should be given a 7- to 10-day course of antimicrobic therapy regardless of vaccination history. Recommended antimicrobials include tetracyclines, chloramphenicol, or streptomycin.
The plague vaccine licensed for use in the United States is prepared from Y. pestis organisms grown in artificial media, inactivated with formaldehyde, and preserved in 0.5% phenol. ...
the bad news? It takes a few shots to give you immunity and some people just don't develop antibodies.
Following the primary series of 3 injections, about 7% of individuals do not produce PHA antibody, and a few fail to develop a titer of 128, the level correlated with immunity in experimental animals. PHA titers should be determined for individuals who have an unusually high risk of infection or who have a history of serious reactions to the vaccine in order to govern the frequency of booster doses. Such testing can be arranged through state health departments. Since plague vaccination may only ameliorate illness, whenever a vaccinated person has a definite exposure, prophylactic antibiotics may be indicated whether or not an antibody response has been demonstrated.
I should add: usually it is sporadic cases, so one doubts it would turn into an epidemic nowadays.
or maybe not given the fact that the homeless and failure to remove garbage has led to lots of rats in some US cities.
there already are reports of typhus which is also spread via fleas.
So could plague be far behind?
(ironically, one of the cases was spread by cat fleas. Uh oh).
there have been three epidemics of Black Plague: The first, the Plague of Justinian, the second the medieval Black death, and the third in the last century (something few know about: but a local outbreak inspired Camus book The plague)
the third epidemic started in China. from the above CDC article;
The third (Modern) pandemic began in southwestern China in the mid-19th, struck Hong Kong in 1894, and was soon carried by rat-infested steamships to port cities on all inhabited continents, including several in the United States
By 1930, the third pandemic had caused more than 26 million cases and 12 million deaths.
the name black plague comes from necrotic lymph node abcesses, aka bubos. But it is not the most frightening type.
Plague in these three pandemics was predominantly the bubonic form, emanating from Yersinia pestis-infected rats and fleas, although terrifying outbreaks of the more virulent person-to-person spreading pneumonic form were recorded during the course of each. The explosive contagiousness and severity of pneumonic plague was most completely documented in Manchurian epidemics in the early 20th century, which involved tens of thousands of cases, virtually all of them fatal (Wu, 1926). Improved sanitation, hygiene, and modern disease control methods have, since the early 20th century, steadily diminished the impact of plague on public health, to the point that an average of 2,500 cases is now reported annually (World Health Organization, 2003). The plague bacillus is, however, entrenched in rodent populations in scattered foci on all inhabited continents except Australia (Gage, 1998; Gratz, 1999b), and eliminating these natural transmission cycles is unfeasible. Furthermore, although treatment with antimicrobials has reduced the case fatality ratio of bubonic plague to 10% or less, the fatality ratio for pneumonic plague remains high
But the danger not mentioned in any of there articles: Pulmonic plague. Quickly fatal, and on the list of dangerous germs for biowarfare.
The idea of using plague as a weapon is not new. Anecdotal reports describe catapulting of plague cadavers into enemy fortifications in 14th and 18th century warfare (Derbes, 1996; Gasquet, 1908; Marty, 2001). In World War II, the Japanese military experimented with plague in human subjects at their clandestine biological research facilities in Manchuria, and on several occasions dropped Y. pestis-infested fleas from low-flying planes on Chinese civilian populations, causing limited outbreaks of bubonic plague and initiating cycles of infection in rats (Bellamy and Freedman, 2001; Harris, 1992; Kahn, 2002). Biological warfare research programs begun by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the US during the Second World War intensified during the Cold War, and in the 1960s both nations had active programs to “weaponize” Y. pestis.
how bad could the release of plague germs be? Uh oh:
Models developed by this expert committee predicted that the intentional release of 50 kg of aerosolized Y. pestis over a city of 5 million would, in its primary effects, cause 150,000 cases of pneumonic plague and 36,000 deaths.
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