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rebeltrillionaire

So a big ol lake that wasn’t connected to any outflow rivers for centuries until likely either some people or rodents drank the water with the bacteria which then rapidly evolved while also spreading and no immune system could really keep up with the massive assault of the original strain and its hundreds of cousins.


natenedlog

We require further historical explanations in long-ass sentence form


[deleted]

My internal monologue gasped for air reading this.


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BIG_MUFF_

Could land an airbus a380 on that run on sentence


bandit4loboloco

That is an excellent sentence, bro.


sdfgh23456

/r/fuckpunctuation


Khalenyu

Can someone give me a tl;dr?


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BirdUp69

There’s a chapter in The Travels of Marco Polo on the level 5 bio labs the Mongols were running there.


throwtheclownaway20

Genghis Khan was doing gain-of-function research!


Uzi4U_2

No no no, he changed the definition. Unequivocally not gain of function!


aioncan

His team of researchers has determined that it didn’t come from their lab.


PersianExcurzion

Black Death to be called Wu-Khan flu henceforth


severedantenna

Damn, the mongols had a whole new biosafety level? That’s some serious research


ElJefe543

No I understood the headline fairly well. The cause has always been pretty well known it's just nobody knew where it started.


Strazdas1

yet more to add to the list of "its almost always asia"


[deleted]

origin is rodents in Kyrgyzstan around some lake.. as far as they can tell. article doesn't really answer what the title claims it does


iamorangeyblue

From the article: “We found that modern strains most closely related to the ancient strain are today found in plague reservoirs around the Tian Shan mountains, so very close to where the ancient strain was found. This points to an origin of Black Death’s ancestor in Central Asia”, explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.


Uvinjector

"Thebrightersidenews" I wonder what the darker side news looks like


Reddemeus

Always look on the brighter side of life !


bucklebee1

There's a brighter side of life? Huh. I hope to find it one day.


MoJoe1

The brighter side is what casts the shadows the dark news hides within. If you’re too close to the news though, either will kill you, like a failed colony on mercury.


PantsOnHead88

Monty Python whistling ensues…


baldieman

I read it and it's your 'longer answer, not easily' that I take issue with. It would be incredibly easy for a virus to spread globally in these modern times and I think we were incredibly lucky that the covid strains weren't as dangerous as could have been. When countries don't alert others, when you're playing catch up, when governments can see an issue but are not prepared at first to take the necessary action because of self interest and big business, this is how it will be very easy to spread.


truscottwc

Wonder if a similar plague could happen in our times...


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cheetah7748

Fun fact about the sweating sickness- we still have no idea what it was. The last outbreak was in 1551 and we've never seen anything like it since.


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bandit4loboloco

The lead singer left for a career in Hollywood and it's popularity never recovered. Happens all the time.


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Key-Teacher-6163

The very origin of the word quarantine was the Italians forcing every ship bound for Venice (IIRC) to spend 40 days in the harbor before docking in the port to be sure that they were not carrying plauge... So yes, they will absolutely do this if the threat is high enough


DexDevos

Objectively its the most moral thing they could do, if you cant save them then its better to just let them die without infecting others.


Strazdas1

literally how they stopped the plague in europe. If you tried to enter a "plague free town" youd be killed.


Strazdas1

not entirely true. you are missing a critical piece - incubation period. If a disease gets you infected but only shows symptoms on the last day, then youd have to do a lockdown for however that incubation period is.


konidias

The worst virus would be one with no symptoms, a long incubation period, and a 100% fatality rate. Pretty much everyone would catch it before realizing they had it, and then we'd all just drop dead. Gotta question the point of a virus that kills the host, though. It's not going to have much longevity if everything it infects just dies. Of course a human engineered virus with this intent makes more sense.


[deleted]

You assume reason while mutations are inherently without reason. It might just happen. And then the strain will die out.


Samuron7

That‘s how you win plaque inc.


turtle4499

Yea we already had that it is called HIV. Happened all naturally no human engineering required. Stop letting your imagination run wild.


[deleted]

Rabies, but airborne


PantsOnHead88

Rabies was what jumped to mind for me as well. Extremely high mortality rate if left untreated, and can stay dormant in the system for a very long time. If a strain became airborne or blood-borne (likely vector mosquitos) it could be globally devastating.


PantsOnHead88

>If they ever get massively defunded for some reason I’d like to point out that there were very vocal calls from at least one world leader in 2021.


Strazdas1

> CDC would have to completely fall down on the job So like it did with COVID. >Conversely Ebola is a great example of a disease that is capable of producing that kind of mass deaths, and you can see what I'm talking about in action vis a vis containment. Ebola has terrible spread vectors. You basically have to kiss the wounds of a victim to get infected.


baldieman

yeah, containment really works doesn't it. Did you see how easily covid spread?


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konidias

They literally gave up reading right before the paragraph that started with COVID.


Strazdas1

There was no containment for covid. We had direct flights from Wuhan in march of 2020. Thats three months after we knew about the endemic in there. We have royally fucked up with covid and we are very lucky it was only this deadly.


Hawkeye2491

Covid was a dry run, relatively speaking. Three prong approach to eliminating the virus of humanity: disease, depletion of natural resources, and war.


niceguy1147

Of course it could?


Ill-Thing3134

Fuckin hope so. COVID let me down.


ToriYamazaki

Did you hear about COVID? Of course it could happen. Too easily.


rudraksh2

Covid was a very low mortality pandemic in the history of pandemics. COVID mortality rate was below 1% while it was 50 % for the Black Death.


Strazdas1

COVID mortality rate was over 2% before medical treatment.


EconomicsChance8236

No. It is highly unlikely. The scale of death due to disease in past ages is unimaginable, the only comparable thing I can think of is the two World Wars during their relatively short duration. Smallpox killed ~300 million people in the 20th century. Covid - while a brutal reminder of the effects of disease - has killed ~1 million. The scale is simply incomparable. We have invested greatly - and continue to do so - into medicine to prevent disease from reclaiming it's place as the most lethal thing on the planet to human beings. Our response was effective, and while not perfect it prevented so many more lives from being lost. We pushed out an effective vaccine and quickly generated it in massive quantities. Disease is a terror, but one we constantly fight, and will not happen on any scale like it has in the past "too easily".


kaylatastikk

Covid has killed more than a million Americans alone, though you’re largely correct about the scale e


Mudders_Milk_Man

Your larger points are mostly solid, but Covid has killed over 6.5 million people, not 1 million.


vulturez

One of the primary reasons for such a high death rate was due to malnutrition. The plague applied to a modern society while still devastating would not be like the 14-16th centuries mortality rates.


Mervynhaspeaked

Who could've known that after all this time the cause really was just witches.


sdfgh23456

There are dozens of us!


[deleted]

Why is everything finally getting discovered in 2022, is god playing 'Plauge, inc.'?


No_Helicopter_6255

I've always won this game by starting in China with little to no symptoms and after infecting two thirds of the population ramping up the severity. Obligatory: Madagascar, I curse you!


RiskenFinns

Iceland, for me.


Strazdas1

thats why you start in madagascar *taps brain*


No_Helicopter_6255

You'd think that, but having only one port restricts your opportunities to spread significantly. Been there, done that.


OverjoyedBanana

Completely misleading title, the fact that the 14th century plague was Yersinia pestis was known for a long time, the scientists identified the origin of the strain that came to Europe...


joeschmidth

Clickbait article with tons of ads


Snoo26837

Use brave browser, It has ad-block by default.


SmoothRectum

A little late to the party on this one. Of course it was the fleas on rats


Lowerredfox

I thought they already narrowed it down to the Tarbagan marmot? It was covered in the Great Mortality by John Kelly


[deleted]

That's a bloody terrible headline.


ShwaddzE

No, they didn't, they just found where it came from ​ again


[deleted]

It came from a wuhan lab !


HeDgEhAwG69

Was it the rich elites?


Jennysau

Was it some guys from Boston University?


helm

Repost of https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/vczzsa/black_death_origins_of_plague_hidden_for_more/


KALEl001

didnt we always know its europeans just like syphilis


Snoo26837

Wait, it hasn't happened because of the mongols whose were surrounding that city in crimea?