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Bubonic Plague found in Arizona

I read a long while back that plague was endemic in ground rodents in the hills of California. Probably best to avoid all wild rodents if you can.

The thing is, bubonic plague is spread by fleas. You especially do NOT want to get close to a freshly killed wild rodent, because as the body temp drops, the fleas abandon ship to the next warm body nearby: You.

The mechanism to how bubonic plague commandeers fleas to transmit the pathogen is really rather interesting. Well worth seeking out and reading about.
 
As a former necropsy technician within an Animal Biosafety Level-3 laboratory in Albuquerque, NM...

Plague is present in many places. As you pointed out Dave and Rich, such places happen to include AZ and CA. NM is also another, and better yet, here's a map from the CDC.

http://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

While in NM you'd see the occasional news article from the very few cases each year. Another nasty out there was Tularemia (Fransicella tularensis), aka "rabbit-itis" from an old bugs bunny cartoon where Elmer had a coated tongue and spots before his eyes.

As one that has spent time in this field and whom is married to a microbiologist, for now this is just hyperbole.
 
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We used to see it all the time in California...nothing to see here people....move along...
 
We would still occasionally see it in Colorado when I lived there. It's one of those things that is probably here to stay. Whereas ebola...
 
The bubonic plague is caused by a bacteria that is easily treated with antibiotics.

Ebola is a virus that is transmitted through contact with an infected persons bodily fluids primarily blood but also in other fluids like saliva and sweat(which can be droplets from coughing and sneezing). Symptoms may not appear for up to 24 days and when they do complications can cause organs to rapidly shut down, primarily liver then kidneys, which contrary to what the media and cdc are trying to make is think, it is not easily treated with modern medicine. As hard as we try people are dying daily from liver and kidney failure and infections from many other sources so I don't know why the media is portraying such an overconfident attitude about this virus.
 
I am a nurse and I have not been trained how to care for a patient with Ebola. And I work in critical care. None of us have been trained. And if a patient tests positive for ebola the CDC better send in their own nurse because I'm not going to be anywhere near it without training. I'll take care of meningitis, mrsa, vre, esbl, tuberculosis any day because I've been trained for it. We haven't been trained or prepared for it in any way shape or form.
 
There is a "feel good" piece in the local newspaper today encouraging people to not shun people suspected of being infected with Ebola. Yeah, right.......

When the people dealing with such people stop wearing full hazmat suits when around them, THEN I'll stop being concerned myself.
 
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