While SARS, Avian flu and Swine Flu have been getting the major share of front page headlines in the last few years, there could be other candidates for the Plague(s) of the Year.
Does anyone else find it odd, that the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the mainstream US media are not reporting on a case of bubonic plague that was discovered today in a school and park in New Mexico, USA (http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1014031.shtml?cat=516 ) or is the world too overtaken with a final tribute to Michael Jackson? Local news reports that: The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office is warning people to avoid a Santa Fe park and an elementary school after rodents found in both locations tested positive for bubonic plague. According to department spokeswoman Carla Lopez, a dead rock squirrel and a dead prairie dog found on the Nava Elementary School campus tested positive for plague while four prairie digs trapped and removed from Franklin Miles Park tested positive for plague. All six animals have died."
UPDATE: Another case of "plague" was reported on July 8th in San Diego, but the news story only calls it the plague without referring to bubonic plague. The story notes that the "plague is commonly detected in the county's mountains in the summer, officials said." China is battling an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) which strikes young people similar to Swine Flu but has no cure or vaccine. The Irish potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) from the 1840’s is making a comeback threatening commercial and home garden plots with potato and tomato crops in Pennsylvania "Tough economic times have many families taking up vegetable gardening, and tomato is often the most important crop in gardens," scientists said. "Late blight is a common disease in Pennsylvania and the Northeast since it likes the cool temperatures and frequent rains of our summers. If it gets entrenched in a backyard vegetable patch, it can create a serious problem for neighbors and for commercial growers because the disease spores are easily carried in wind currents to infect susceptible plants in even the most remote areas in our region." See Serious disease threatens home gardens, commercial fields:
Bee colonies are in trouble too...hence all crops that require pollination. "One of the biggest threats to their survival is disease. The worst culprit is the varroa mite, a tiny insect which lives off the bodily liquids of bees in the hive and was first found on these shores back in 1992." ...."The varroa mite has spread to most areas of the world where honey bees are kept and it is present on all continents except Australia," said a spokesman for the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)...." Experts have been predicting that without some kind of intervention, bees could be an endangered species by the end of the next decade. If that happened the consequences could be catastrophic – losing their pollinating skills would pose a very real threat to our ability to grow food." see story here Potentially the most threatening is Ug-99 –a wheat blight, first isolated in Uganda in 1999, hence the name Ug-99. It’s threatening vulnerable monoculture wheat crops that have no natural resistance and has the potential to cause famines around the globe, especially in developing countries and prolong the recession in wheat growing “bread basket” countries: China, USA, Argentina, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and others. “In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low.” says Lester Brown in a recent Scientific American article**. “As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China's wheat crop, the world's largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China's rice production dropped 4 percent. The world's most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.” ..which could be threatened by Ug-99. On top of that, a cold (freezing) and dry June has decimated wheat crops in Canada's praries and in Ukraine. **COULD FOOD SHORTAGES BRING DOWN CIVILIZATION? Lester R Brown. Scientific American. New York: May 2009. Vol. 300, Iss. 5; pg. 50 Eerily similar to several of the 10 biblical plagues that God cast on Egypt in the Bible (from wikipedia) 1. (Exodus 7:14–25) rivers and other water sources turned to blood killing all fish and other water life. 2. (Exodus 8:1–8:15) amphibians (commonly believed to be frogs) 3. (Exodus 8:16–19) lice or gnats 4. (Exodus 8:20–30) beasts or flies 5. (Exodus 9:1–7) disease on livestock 6. (Exodus 9:8–12) unhealable boils 7. (Exodus 9:13–35) hail mixed with fire 8. (Exodus 10:1–20) locust 9. (Exodus 10:21–29) darknes 10. (Exodus 11:1–12:36) death of the first-born of all Egyptian families.
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