http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080115/sc_nm/plague_threat_dc

What do you think? Are you afraid? Even a little alarmed? (I am)

no. just keep clean.

Are you sure that "keeping clean" is the answer?
(I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just interested)

the bubonic plague spread so quickly becuase of the fact that noone kept themselves clean.

most health experts agree the black death would have never been anywhere that big if early europeans just washed their hands.

I don't worry about most things I see on the news. I am pretty sure they try to scare us to get their ratings up so they come out with every possible threat to your life, or your families lives that they can conceive.

That, and people love to have something to worry about and they read the news to bask in their tactics. Journalists/reporters exaggerate everything. Their reports are all biased every time.

However, I can stand by one thing: PRACTICE GOOD HYGIENE.

^I concur

MissHygienic will come to CreateBlog's rescue if any of us are infected!

I'm not worried.

Another reason why the bubonic plague spread so quickly was due to extremely tight/cramped slums that were infested with plagued rats. The water got infected also. Today, things are much cleaner and people have (usually) a better sense of hygiene.

Diseases don't get completely wiped out. There will always be carriers that are immune to it who spread it to people who aren't. Most epidemics occur in cycles. They emerge in and out of civilization. As medicine/technology and personal hygiene improved, the number that are exposed to it and/or those that actually die from it decrease.

I'm not worried. I was only worried when a New Jersey lab lost a rat that was infected with the plague because that is incredibly stupid.

don't worry unless you see a bunch of black rats scurrying around and then moments later a person walking around with buboes on their armpits.

If it's not the Bubonic Plague, it'll be Nuclear Warfare, AIDS, Superbugs, Cancer, Global Warming, Obesity or whatever else the illustrious "they" decide to frighten us with next.

I always thought that bacteria and molecular things would be the end of human kind.


So no, not that afraid.

isn't bubonic plague not aire-born? as in if the person infected with it coughs the bacteria is now flung into the air and people can't get it?

^The Bubonic Plague is spread through contact either by insects transmitting infected blood or someone coughing on other infected droplets (saliva).

Well, maybe if we lived back in the way I'd be panicking. But now that we have more advanced technology and medicine. We don't have to worry so much.