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Arizona resident dies from the plague
- iJohnDoe 1y agoIn general, how do you get exposed to it? Hiking? Do people often get that close to prairie dogs? Hiking in Utah?
- heavyset_go 1y agoFleas bite you in your sleep
- Waterluvian 1y agoWhich plague?
- carterschonwald 1y agoBubonic
- mcv 1y agoAccording to the article, they're all the same plague, but it manifests differently based on which organs it hits. Apparently there's a couple of cases every year, but I've got to say that amidst the return of measles and various other diseases, the cuts in healthcare, this is not a great look.
- Waterluvian 1y agoApparently it’s very easy to treat, if you can and do seek treatment. Which is why the annual deaths are usually rural regions.
- toomuchtodo 1y agohttps://ruralhospitals.chqpr.org/Map.html https://ruralhospitals.chqpr.org/Map.html
- ginko 1y agoFrom the article: >Symptoms often begin within a week of infection and may include fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes, nausea and weakness. If I had symptoms like that I think I'd just stay at home and not visit a doctor yet. Certainly not within 24 hours of them showing up.
- jll29 1y agoMumps, a common kid's viral disease, has overlapping symptoms, so many people might follow a "let's wait and see" approach. Also, medical practitioners may not immediately put on their bioharzard protection suite when someone walks in with swollen lymph nodes and nausea. That's why it is important to take news of incidents and location of the occurrence into consideration, both as a patient and as medical staff.
- SoftTalker 1y agoMumps is commonly vaccinated against when children are very young. It’s one of the Ms in the MMR vaccine.
- asyx 1y agoIt’s 2025 my guy. Can’t count on kids getting vaccinated anymore.
- Waterluvian 1y agoDepends where you are. I guess the U.S. has an outsized representation online but it’s less than 5% of the world. Up here kids are not permitted to go to school without it. There’s some exceptions but they’re, in practice, very difficult to secure.
- SoftTalker 1y agoThe vast majority are. Most parents are not idiots.
- deleted 1y ago
- rayiner 1y agoAs of July 2025, the U.S. had about 1,300 measles cases compared to over 2,700 in Canada as of May 2025: https://vaxopedia.org/2025/06/02/the-north-american-measles-outbreak-of-2025 https://vaxopedia.org/2025/06/02/the-north-american-measles-.... See also: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-measles-cases-hit-highest-number-33-years/story?id=123564379 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-measles-cases-hit-highest-n... Canada obviously had only 1/10th the population. Your attempted connection to domestic policies is spurious.
- Waterluvian 1y agoI think the statistical anomaly you point out is an incredibly worthwhile thing to explore. There’s something to understand there. But I’m not sure it directly supports or refutes any arguments about domestic policies, other than perhaps saying that domestic policy making does not have a 100% guaranteed desired effect. There’s likely numerous other variables to explore.
- rayiner 1y agoNo, I’m agreeing that it’s not about domestic policies. That’s my point. OP tried to bring domestic cuts to Medicaid into the issue to make it sound like the measles cases in the U.S. have something to do with that domestic policy.
- mcv 1y agoThat's a misrepresentation. I did not claim that the cuts to medicaid caused the rise in measles; that would have been a silly claim, considering those cuts are being made right now, whereas the rise in measles is already ongoing. I'm saying it's part of a pattern. The rise in measles, after it was practically eliminated, is obviously caused by the rise in anti-vax beliefs. And that plus the other factors I mentioned are part of a pattern of carelessness and misinformation around public health. All of it put together, these are extremely worrisome developments.
- rayiner 1y ago
- throw310822 1y agoYersinia pestis, the bubonic plague.
- mplewis9z 1y agoYou do know that both pneumonic and bubonic are caused by the same bacterium, right? They’re just different transmission methods.
- throw310822 1y agoIndeed. I wrongly assumed it would be bubonic as it seems to be the most common form (and because it qualifies a bit the term "plague" which can be perceived as generic, I think).
- lazide 1y agoYes, many types of bacteria can cause ‘a plague’, but at least in the western world, only one was ‘The Plague’. Probably anyway, there is some debate on that. But it’s pretty likely.
- readthenotes1 1y agoYou left one variant off, apparently: "Plague occurs in three forms, bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic, depending on whether the infection hits the lymph nodes, bloodstream or lungs. Most US cases are bubonic, typically spread via flea bites from infected rodents. " Given the discussion of the prairie dog die off, it's more interesting than it was mnemonic and not move on it for me fleas
- Waterluvian 1y agoMnemonic Plague People Learn About Germs Using Epidemiology
- marssaxman 1y agoMany years ago, I knew a family who named the three squirrels who regularly visited their back yard "Bubonic", "Pneumonic", and "Septicemic". The squirrels did not respond to these names, but the family sure did find it amusing to use them.
- lynndotpy 1y agoNot stated in the article, but it's pneumonic plague, according to this story from azcentral and this story from CNN: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2025/07/11/plague-death-arizona/84604256007/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/20... https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/health/plague-death-arizona https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/health/plague-death-arizona
- Gys 1y ago> Plague is a bacterial infection known for killing tens of millions in 14th century Europe. Today, it’s easily treated with antibiotics. > The bubonic plague is the most common form of the bacterial infection, which spreads naturally among rodents like prairie dogs and rats.
- southernplaces7 1y agoNasty thing that. Bubonic plague became famous for killing nearly half the western world in the 14th century in just a few years, but for all its voracious destructiveness, the pneumonic variant left it in the dust in specific situations. I've read that in cities and towns where plague took on its pneumonic form instead of its bubonic variant, 80%+ of the local population would die in just days. In some cities struck by this, populations didn't recover until the 18th century.
- southernplaces7 1y agoI think it's innately impossible for us now in the comparatively near-sterile, social safety-laden developed world of today to imagine such grotesque death happening so suddenly on such a vast scale. The COVID pandemic, for all the fear and emergency measures it sparked mostly killed sporadically. In any average social group, family or community, one would hear of only a very small minority of people having actually died. It was, comparatively, a sort of kid-gloves pandemic in terms of pure clinical impact. Compare that with hearing stories of a vast and utterly mysterious dying sweeping towards all that you know, only to suddenly hear one day of inhabitants in the outermost parts of your city falling like flies in the most disgusting of ways, and then being forced to watch the same thing you'd feared from rumor unfold before your very eyes to those you love, taking each of them in turn so terribly that you can barely bring yourself to even approach (let alone try help) these same people that you'e cherished since birth. This abyss of tragedy overwhelms you and all your senses before finally, just days later, you wake up with yet another exhausting morning to the discovery of nearly every single person you know being dead, and all the social tapestry that wove you together so richly across so many years now completely erased from your personal world. All this monstrous upheaval, in just a single week.
- tolerance 1y agoI was let down by the link to "plague" in the lede being internal. I don't know what I expected, because that's the norm. At the very least, what I'd like to see from news sites is using a LLM to synthesize the most recent/relevant stories to generate some sort of blurb explaining the topic for a given page. That is, if a human can't be bothered to do it themselves.
- slicktux 1y agoI recall being on a road trip and was at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains; was getting ready to camp at a random camp site and noticed a sign warning or squirrels that carry bubonic plague via fleas… Scary..
- kulahan 1y agoIt’s not usually very bad. My wife used to do epidemiology in Utah, and the four corner states have a few plague cases every year. Very easy to get from prairie dogs as well. Iirc, prairie dog colonies are separated based on which ones have the plague and which don’t.
- Animats 1y agoThere's a vaccine, but it's old and not recommended for the general population.[1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00041848.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00041848.htm
- kulahan 1y agoThere is also a cure if you catch it quick. It’s a pretty good cure - TFA says it has a survival rate of 90% with treatment.
- RandomBacon 1y agoI knew someone (in the U.S.) who contracted the plague along with his wife. He survived but his wife did not. According to him, about one person dies each year from it.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoWhat improvements do we have to survive against the plague compared to in the past? I'm curious to understand the difference
- LarsDu88 1y agoAntibiotics. Yersenia pestis is a bacteria that can be killed by most antibiotics
- bigiain 1y agoAnd we have better Plague Masks these days. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/plague-doctors-beaked-masks-coronavirus https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/plague-do... (I am making popcorn, in preparation for the inevitable administration schism and late night TweetRants between the "ban masks at all costs because what about her emails" and "profiteer from selling plague masks to the CDC under contracts bought with campaign donations" factions. I predict red plague masks with MAGA logos.)
- Yeul 1y agoI am currently watching a TV show about a 21st century Japanese doctor who is sent back in time to 19th century Edo and it is fascinating how the answer to so many diseases is basically "penicillin". How the hell humanity managed to last so long without antibiotics is mindboggling.
- Beijinger 1y agoI think the plague has not been an issue since it is very sensitive against penicillin. What is concerning is more the speed from diagnosis to death in this case.
- carl_dr 1y agoSadly, it could be as simple as the guy didn’t run up tens of thousands of dollars of healthcare, and left it too late to get treatment.
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- cvoss 1y agoI can find no news outlet reporting the fact claimed in the headline, that the person died less than 24 hours after showing symptoms. What is reported, in this article and many others, is that the person arrived at the hospital and died there the same day. There is no mention in any article I have read that the symptoms began less than 24 hours before the death.
- OJFord 1y agoThis article kind of implies it: > The victim was rushed to Flagstaff Medical Center, showing severe symptoms, and died the same day. But sure, that doesn't rule out that the symptoms became severere, or that there weren't different lesser symptoms beforehand. It does make it sound like it was all pretty immediate though.
- kazinator 1y agoI.e. "after showing symptoms" and "after showing symptoms to staff, having finally checked in to a medical center" are completely different.
- toast0 1y agoThat they were rushed to the medical center and died the same day doesn't tell us much. They could have been ill at home for several days or weeks until someone decided to call for help; then when first responders arrived, they saw it was serious and rushed the patient to the medical center. The local reporting just said the patient died the same day they sought care, without saying anything about when the illness may have started.
- amy214 1y ago>The local reporting just said the patient died the same day they sought care, without saying anything about when the illness may have started. Such velocity is possible but rare. I've seen people die from necrotizing fasciitis, for example, that died at such a velocity (1-2 days). Granted it's an extremely rare infection like amoeba of the brain.
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- meindnoch 1y agoSo it begins.
- donnaalbert 1y ago[dead]
- commienews 1y ago[flagged]
- noirchen 1y agoIn China, particularly in Tibet and Qinghai, plague still occasionally occurs, because a wild animal, the Himalayan marmots carry it and people may get plague from them. After the CCP took over Tibet, antibotics were gradually used to cure the plague. Recent years, more people are traveling to Tibet by the newly built highways, and those people from the cities only find the marmots cute and sometimes touch them and get the disease. Local governments put large warning signs along the road to alert people about this, and hospitals and clinics in nearby towns are always prepared to cure some stupid tourists. Still, it is a potential threat, especially for now because now you can drive home in Shanghai with a cute marmot from infected region for only a few days, not knowing what comes home with you.