Quote:
Originally Posted by Phrozen Sands
I remember watching something on the history channel about the Bubonic Plague. I just remember it being spread by rats, and also, back then, people didn't practice the best hygiene measures. The thing that gets me, and maybe you or CG can answer this question, but what happened to the Bubonic Plague? Why aren't people affected by it today? A lot of the old diseases have seemed to "disappear", but the newer diseases are still doing damage. No, not like the Bubonic Plague, but still keeping numbers.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek
Well, over the long-term, novel diseases may adapt to humans or may go extinct. Adaption does not imply that the disease becomes mild -- merely that it gains the ability to survive and multiply in humans. The level of virulence acquired depends on the mode of transmission and how plentiful, crowded (and as said above), unhygienic the human hosts are.
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I always thought that natural selection and population resistance had something to do with it, in addition to basic hygiene and city planning. Several major rounds of plague destroyed pretty large portions of the population in some cases. In the middle ages, a major bout wiped out more than a third of the European population. Isn't that classic Darwinism?
Also, it's a bacterial infection, so several antibiotics are effective treatment against it, no?
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