Plague: Then vs now

It's rare because we have higher hygiene standards. Basically washing our hands eliminated the black plague.

I'm just going to Edit this comment because I don't feel the need to explain to every idiot commenting "ACKSTUALLY."
My comment was an over simplification. By having higher hygiene standards we reduced our contact with rats and other things that can carry it. It is essentially “We did A, which caused B through G, which lead to less of H.” If you don't understand or see the connection then that isn't my fault, blame your education.

Evolve Necrosis FTW. Gotta have corpse-to-living tx. The real problem with plague inc. is the motivation though the disease is likely dead one turn after humanity.

This is where we need a conspiracy theory that all complex life is just an intricate biological shell/animate castle-o-saurus, designed to protect and nourish a few self replicating acids, with defense mechanisms to try to kill any interlopers that seek to replicate faster without dissuading anything sexually compatible.

I see you haven't been to some towns that literally still throw shit in the streets.

Its bacteria not a virus

And?

If I know anything from my time in the Army, everyone just went over to the next hill and continued rolling around in the contaminated uniform.

Some people didn’t get it and some had the right genes to fight off the disease. Those genes have now been linked to autoimmune diseases https://www.health.harvard.edu/...

In addition to what the other commenter said, there's some luck of the draw, too. There were three forms of it, having to do with how you were infected. Bubonic was one, associated with sores and boils on the skin, caused by flea bites. Pnumonic was a lung infection, which could spread directly via droplets. And septemic was the blood infection version, usually happening as one of the others progressed.

Bubonic only killed about 40-60% of those who showed symptoms, while pnumonic and septemic killed 90-100% of those who showed symptoms.

So to get infected at all, you needed either to be bitten by an infected flea, share air with someone who has pnumonic, or share fluids with someone that has bubonic (specifically the pus from the sores) or septemic (the blood, though maybe other fluids too).

Some managed to avoid these entirely. Others could have had lower exposures to the point where they didn't develop symptoms. If someone gets infected but the infection doesn't get established enough to become stable, they often don't get treated any differently from people who weren't infected at all. Those death rates only apply to those that they knew had it (though sometimes death rates are given per population rather than infected, and those tended to vary wildly in infected areas, from like 50% to 80%).

With viruses, at least, asymptomatic infection seems to be far more common than we would have thought. Both ebola and covid antibody studies showed that the antibodies were found in many who never got sick, implying they were exposed but their immune system beat it before symptoms showed up.

Bacteria isn't necessarily the same, but it's possible that something like this is a factor and those might have even developed some immunity. Plus, natural selection would select for people who are just less susceptible to it while it's out there killing off a significant part of the population.

Let me tell you about my mother.

Doesn't have to be one, I've made a list

Oh I am partying once Trump keels over. Absolutely no shame admitting that.

Them's the breaks... Sea fairing was a dangerous occupation.

I guess eventually some enterprising individuals would attempt to salvage the boat and contents...

And the virus evolved to be less deadly and people evolved to have better immune responses to it.

The "Spanish Flu" still exists, and is all around us. Endemic to humanity. Meaning the H1N1-subtype of the influenza virus. Which killed 50-100 million people in 1918-1920. (Nowadays it's called the seasonal flu)

I'd like to find an image of anti-antivaxxers, from around that time. They had some good burns against the silly antivaxxers and I just can't remember what they were.

And the fact that everyone else left alive had some form of immunity or resistance.

That's because Tylenol didn't exist yet

Legitimately, what else would they use? Hardly anyone uses Mastodon - I don't for sure, but from what I hear, the devs continually ignore the needs that people keep asking about. Which is why so many turned to Bluesky - it works.

To discuss the Threadiverse that I am much more familiar with, literally 100% of the people that I've told about "Lemmy" have outright chided me for having told them about it. (1) If you Google'd that term (not DuckDuckGo, I'm talking mainstream normies here) a year ago, it would take you to lemmy.ml; (2) that instance by default does not show All, but rather Local; (3) lemmy.ml - along with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net - routinely calls for the murder of everyone participating in a capitalist, Western society (Edit: not just billionaires, or even millionaires, but anyone who participates). And showing Local rather than All does not dilute that flood as much as you see your view of the Threadiverse content from lemmy.world. (4) no major Lemmy instances defederate from lemmy.ml (quokk.au did iirc, before it switched all the way over to PieFed).

There are some MAJOR structural issues with the Fediverse that need to be solved first, before mainstream normies - who remember are primarily centrist (aka liberal to even right-wing by the standards here) - will feel comfortable here. Not celebrating and calling for their literal irl murder might be a start. (Note that while YOU might have such communities and user accounts blocked, a guest account, especially browsing lemmy.ml, cannot and would not know how to deal with such - e.g. a new account on most instances could respond to comments in Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net while browsing All and have no idea what they are walking into... then noping out and worst of all, telling everyone that will listen how extremist we are here)

We are a Nazi bar here, except instead of Nazis it's tankies. Also, purity beatings will continue until morale improves. Mainstream people do not feel welcomed here. And most people seem unable to even say so much as they should be? Would you want more "right-wing" people here? (I actually mean centrists, but especially in the USA where so many are located, that is more where they would lean, right?)

Edit: so to answer your question, they use Xhitter the same way that we use the Threadiverse - by blocking early and blocking often, and putting up with what the remainder of stuff that they do not like, in order to make some use of what is freely offered to them, especially requiring minimal efforts to overcome their existing inertia.

At the time of the plague, the Catholic church dominated every state politically; they were the undisputed masters of Europe.

After the plague, they never recovered the same amount of control again. This was the start of a long decline that continues to this day. The plague revealed how truly ineffectual and predatory the church was, even to the most ignorant.

Recommend the books The Black Death and The Dancing Plague, I'm over simplifying of course there are many other details.

Lately my autocorrect is fucking up big time after years of good service.

English isn't my main language, but that garbled piece of shit word which should have said "accessed" also doesn't resemble any word in my language.

In 2022, the possible origin of all modern strains of Yersinia pestis was found in DNA in human remains in three graves located in Kyrgyzstan, dated to 1338 and 1339. The first recorded occurrence of the Black Death occurred shortly thereafter during the siege of Caffa in Crimea in 1346, and was carried to Europe by boat by people attempting to escape the disease. The strain was identified as the most recent common ancestor of both strains found in historic graves and currently existing strains.

Holy shit that's wild

The Black Death’s first recorded emergence was in Crimea in 1346, when an army laying siege to the city of Caffa, now known as Feodosia, catapulted disease-ridden corpses over the walls. Those fleeing the resulting outbreak of plague by boat took the disease to Europe.

Honest mistake

I've got to appreciate a serious fact check under my half-assed joke. Thank you, that was genuinely interesting.

Are you blind?