WTF??? Man critical with the plague???

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/15/plague-patient-critical-condition-oregon
<snip>
An Oregon man is in a critical condition with the plague after he was bitten while trying to remove a decaying mouse from the mouth of a stray cat.

The man, who has not been named but is in his 50s, is believed to have caught the disease that rampaged through Europe in the middle ages and is thought to have wiped out between a quarter and a third of the population. In modern times the disease is rare and treatable with antibiotics but can still be fatal.

A local report said the man developed a fever a few days after being bitten on 2 June and was admitted to Crook County hospital.

The disease is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which can develop into three kinds of plague including the bubonic plague, which swells lymph nodes across the body. The other two are septicaemic plague, which affects the bloodstream, and pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs.
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[cali]

1. it happens from time to time.

[HereSince1628]

6. And this case is from exactly where we would expect it...

Plague is endemic in the American west.

[malaise]

7. Thanks for that map

[magical thyme]

2. yes, cases still occasionally appear

What I want to know is why the world somebody was trying to take a dead mouse from a stray cat? I wouldn't try to take a mouse from my pet cat (if she could be bothered to hunt; she retired shortly after moving here), never mind a stray!

My dogs, yes, but only after careful training by offering them a treat if they "drop," but a cat? Yikes. He's lucky to still have any skin left...

[NV Whino]

9. That was my question, too.

Decaying mouse. Stray cat. WTF?

[Aerows]

10. I love my cat

And I wouldn't try to take a kill away from her.... Like you said, a stray? No way. He's lucky he still has fingers.

[Scootaloo]

3. Yup. It's not like the disease vanished after the 15th century.

Thankfully, owing to modern sanitation standards and antibiotic treatments, it's pretty uncommon.

[Meiko]

4. Amazing

how bacteria can be lying around just waiting for an opportunity.

[lapislzi]

15. Vector = opportunity

Fleas are the vector. When you get more fleas due to more rodents and the like, you are going to see these types of vector-borne diseases.

Many hemorrhagic viruses operate the same way. Bugs to critters to people. It's a fairly simple equation. If you want to look for causation, examine predator habitat destruction.

[hobbit709]

5. There's about a dozen cases a year in the US.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/

Last major outbreak was Los Angeles in 1924

[HereSince1628]

8. FYI Link to california public healthinfo site on endemic plague in California...

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/healthinfo/discond/Pages/Plague.aspx

[4th law of robotics]

11. Assuming he lives, which he should

that will be a pretty cool story.

[coalition_unwilling]

12. Are we absolutely 100% sure he had no recent contact with Republicans? - n/t

[malaise]

13. LOL

[slackmaster]

14. Plague is endemic in many areas in the USA

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00026077.htm