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[–] 144 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (7 children)

It didn't disappear btw. The black death wasn't 1 round of disease that killed everyone. There were waves of it and the big one in Europe wasn't the first or last deadly outbreak. It is still around but thanks to antibiotics it is mostly a non issue.

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  • [–] 83 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    When I was stationed in Colorado, we were doing our exercise in an open field of grass, rolling around, doing push-ups and sit-ups etc, when someone ran up and told the person running the formation that we needed to move because plague had been discovered in the prairie dog droppings all over the base, just like the ones we were apparently rolling around in

    Fun times

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    How did it only kill 1/3, did many people survive it?

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 93 points 7 months ago* (8 children)

    "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

    These people would care more if they personally get hurt.

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  • [–] 35 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    That why a rhetorical tool that personalizes death may work.

    Something like "okay, your mother is now dead. And now your wife, and auntie and even your old highschool girlfriend. You watch them all die, bewildered and distraught, but you do nothing until your son dies in front of you, choking on a resporator, pleading in his eyes until the very end."

    "You can stop the rest of your family dying right now right now, right way. you can even save your own life, in a way that will also save other peoples mothers, wifes, and sons. Will you?"

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Let me tell you about my mother.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

    Well, you aint gonna win them all, but something like the above tends to work when people talk about how "some people" should die or go somewhere else. Bringing it back from "somebody" to "you and everyone you know" tends to shock that talk out of them.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Oh I’m just referencing blade runner.

    Your story really reminds me of the Voight-Kampff test.

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  • [–] 67 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    It hasn't disappeared. It's still exists, it's just that if you get it modern antibiotics can kill it.

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    You still have a 5-15% chance of dying with modern antibiotics.

    It's the improvement in sanitary practices that ultimately made it a much lesser issue.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Those are two different things. The bubonic plague is a bacterial infection.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Oh yeah, I should've said "the disease" but I was already talking about flu epidemics in my head.

    Good note, thanks, but for other people, as I understand the difference very well and would never suggest antibiotics as a treatment to virus-borne disease. And the evolution of bacteria is very different from viruses. Hell, we haven't even decided if viruses are technically living or not. Anyway, good point

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  • [–] 61 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    It also killed between 10% and 100% (average of a 3rd or so) of populated areas every 10 years for about 600 years. So ~3x longer than the US has been around.

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  • [–] 192 points 7 months ago* (27 children)

    Also, the Black Plague has not been eradicated. It still exists in small mammals such as gophers and rats, and a strain could potentially mutate to humans again, although changes in human hygiene have made blood to blood infections less common.

    The reason it seemed to disappear is because the more infectious and fatal strains spread to and killed off every susceptible human at a rate that could not support its propagation to new healthy humans.

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  • [–] 111 points 7 months ago* (19 children)

    It actually still exists in people too, it's just rare and treatable with antibiotics.

    https://www.healthline.com/health-news/seriously-dont-worry-about-the-plague

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (17 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago* (12 children)

    Basically washing our hands eliminated the black plague.

    That’s not how it was spread, not really. It was spread by fleas and other blood to blood contact if the person had the bubonic plague and, in later stages, through the air in close contact via infectious respiratory droplets if the person had the pneumonic plague.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    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."

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago* (9 children)

    Your comment was partially incorrect. I corrected you. While it was a matter of hygiene, washing hands had little to nothing to do with it. You didn’t mention anything about rats or the fleas they carried, which were the primary carrier of the bubonic plague

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  • [+] -13 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    I implore you to understand what an over simplification statement mean in regard to a multi step process that took centuries of understanding what to do and not to do. What conditions are considered acceptable now vs 700 years ago and so on.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    An oversimplification doesn't mean you get to make completely false statements. An oversimplification ignores other significant factors to end up with a simple statement that for the most part is true.

    It's rare because we have higher hygiene standards

    This is an acceptable oversimplification.

    Basically washing our hands eliminated the black plague.

    This is not because this is just factually wrong.

    The latter is what is being corrected. Now apply your smartass education and understand when you're wrong.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    If you don't understand how the basic concept of washing your hands (which at the time was just splashing your hands in dirty water) stems from having a higher understanding better quality standards of living, like not sleeping with the farm animals for warmth, shitting in the street, or bathing in dirty water, all of which can cause rats, fleas, and ticks to rampage an area, then that's on you.

    I can't teach you cause and effect of dealing with a long term systemic issue caused by a multitude of factors and variables.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    This is supposition. If you have any reliable sources to back up these claims that washing one’s hands had any actual or meaningful effect on the spread of the black plague, please cite them.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Got a rodent problem? Just wash your hands!

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Sure would have been nice to know this when my house got invested with fleas. No need to flea bomb, I just needed to wash my hands!

    (got a pup from a household with inadequate flea control measures--they'd give him a flea bath weekly, but never treated the environment or their cats. They swore up and down he didn't have fleas.)

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago*

    I take it you just have the pup, so this tip might be for any cat owners passing by:

    I've found to treat cats for fleas the best method is a flea comb and a tub of very bubbly soapy water.

    The cat doesn't go in the water, instead you sit the cat on your lap, comb it's fur gently with the flea comb, and when you spot a flea on the comb, you dunk it in the bubbly soapy water.

    ...the slimey soapy bubbles capture the fleas, and make it a lot harder for them to escape. Turns a traumatic soggy moggy time, into a nice gentle combing kill session.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    I assume you mean well, but this is serious "confidently incorrect" energy. Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, never changed to become less virulent and can still affect humans to this day. It has been killing a ton of humans for thousands of years and was still killing thousands of people at a time in localized outbreaks up until we discovered the antibiotics that cure it.

    Also, it's transmitted through the fleas on small mammals, not through the mammals themselves. Flea transmission is far and away the primary vector. Human to human transmission has always been pretty rare, since it can only be transmitted between humans through contact with bodily fluids, similar to how HIV spreads.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    the more infectious and fatal strains spread to and killed off every susceptible human at a rate that could not support its propagation to new healthy humans

    Plague Inc. has taught me how to be more effective and prevent this from happening.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Sounds like the novel Parasite Eve which inspired a movie and later videogame series. Basically it piggy backs on the concept of Mitochondrial Eve wherein Mitocondria evolved separately from all other cellular life and exists as a symbiotic organism.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Its bacteria not a virus. Our hygiene is the biggest reason it is "gone". No longer throwing shit in the streets.

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  • [–] 85 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The word "quarantine" originates from a Venetian policy that every single ship had to wait outside of port for 40 days to ensure nobody had the plague. I'm sure the antivax people would have no problem with such measures?

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  • [–] 38 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Also it hasn't disappeared. You can friggin catch it right now if you want

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  • [–] 31 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    The Black Plague was truly a horror, but it DID break the back of Catholicism in Europe, so that's nice. Every cloud has a silver lining

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    How so? Didn’t Luther do that a couple hundred years later?

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  • [–] 31 points 7 months ago* (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Which black death book? There are many and I'd like to learn.

    I'm assuming dancing plague is John Waller?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    My memory fails me, here's what I have found on my bookshelf from the last few years

    The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by Kelly

    The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness by Waller

    The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History by Benedictow

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    that continues to this day.

    The US disagrees as do some theocratic states like Iran (nit-pick but i said catholic all you want, they all look the same to me).

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    THE GOOD NEWS The last time I looked, they're all shrinking in membership.

    Also, remember, they have always lied about their predominance, and they always will. Abrahamics have no relationship with the truth, don't ever listen to them and their claims, believe nothing without solid evidence from another source.

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago

    I worked at a zoo for a bit and whenever we went in the prairie dogs enclosure we had to wear lowkey hazmat and fully sanitize before & after bc they can carry it

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  • [–] 26 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It did not disappear. It's still posting on social media.

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  • [–] 42 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    So sick of seeing confidently incorrect people opining, using historical examples, when they have never before cracked open a history book and have no idea of the context.

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  • [–] 37 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

    So sick of seeing confidently incorrect people opining, using historical examples, when they have never before cracked open a history book and have no idea of the context.

    This has always been the case through history.

    The issue is Twitter boosts them over less engaging experts. The new problem is the medium. Twitter is not a fair forum, and these takes trend deliberately.

    ...And I think its really important for scientists (or anyone who believes in science) to recognize that. With all due respect, I do not understand, with everything that's happened, why they still keep using Twitter.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    People also are moving to blue sky (bsky.app) which is the twitter-like thing made by the guy who made Twitter

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Sadly, yeah. Eventually it will enshittify as well, but in the meantime people seem to enjoy it.

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago

    Also it didn't disappear?

    These people are just willfully ignorant and deeply faithful.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    The black plague is common in Madagascar for example, in villages which can't be reqxhes accessed without a helicopter and people there have no money for antibiotics. So doctors without borders are doing there best, but it's still there (among other places). The vaccine for spreading misinformation is education, but sadly people prefer to get their knowledge from tiktok while letting AI do their school work, if they go to school at all.

    Edit: typo

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Your typing of "accessed" went badly enough that I wonder if you also type in another language

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Uhhh penecilin? Also i think its still around, its just easilly treatable

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    Funny thing is the bubonic plague still kills people in the US every year still today, just in small numbers.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    At first I attributed this to dumbfuckery but lately I'm again seeing more of these opinions but now from people who see it as an opportunity

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    JD Vance cheering on the Bubonic Plague.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    In today's installment of it's always projection: This is why Republicans project that the left is a death cult.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Wasn't one of the reasons was realization hygiene was important so helped cut down on spread of it after a while?

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    It did not cause imaginary autism though.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    Wouldn’t the proper follow up have been: ”and so did 1/3 of Europe”?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Yeah but what has it done for you lately

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