EXPERTS: EBOLA OUTBREAK, BLACK DEATH 'PLAGUE' SPREAD FROM AFRICA AS VIRUSES

Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats.  But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians -- and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola.  If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.   Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure.  The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations.

Historical records of the Athenian plague paint a very similar picture to the Black Death and the accelerating Ebola pandemic.  Like Ebola, the plague is believed to have originated in Africa and then travelled northward. 


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