Tweet of the Day, An Interesting Filk About The Black Death edition.

No, really.

The song is interesting; I know just enough about how diseases spread to be able to follow the reasoning. I’ll leave it to others to pick at the argument. Also, professionally speaking: I’m impressed. It’s hard to get some of those terms to scan.

4 thoughts on “Tweet of the Day, An Interesting Filk About The Black Death edition.”

  1. My girlfriend looked over at my browser at exactly the right moment and was shocked that I was at Seanan McGuire’s website, since she’s one of her favorite authors.

  2. The plague pits we’ve excavated confirm bubonic plague. It is *much* less benign than she gives it credit for, and it is known to spread by droplet transmission, rather than just by rats and fleas. Last I heard, parts of Manchuria were still uninhabitable because of the activities of Unit 731, with bubonic plague heading the list of lethal dangers.
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    But there were likely other factors at work. As noted, there is strong evidence of droplet transmission. (Although she overstates the case dramatically with respect to Iceland. The temperature there during the medieval warm period was perfectly tolerable for rats. Also, quarantines were not nearly as effective as she painted them to be. And again, bubonic plague can be transmitted by droplet.) Some of the symptoms line up nicely with bubonic plague, but some of them didn’t.
    That said, they seem to be much closer to bubonic plague than known hemorrhagic fevers.
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    One disease might have piggy backed on another to create non-standard symptoms and elevated death rates. It is generally accepted that widespread pre-existing Tuberculosis infection was the avenue exploited by the Spanish Flu to become so uniquely deadly. But in this case, it’s difficult to contest that bubonic plague was the kicker and the forerunner assisted.
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    (You caught me three days after I packed away my reference material on the events of The Black Plague, and I haven’t reviewed it for many years. So I might be missing a trick or two, especially if new information has come to light that I’m not aware of.)

    1. Wow. That’s .. wow. I don’t even have reference material, just what I’m sorta-kinda aware of..
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      *bows, student to master*

      1. Bah. I know a master, and I’m not him. Not even close
        .
        Mostly, I chase shiny things. I used to have the free time to obsess about anything that caught my attention. (And something was always catching my attention.)
        .
        I do have a bit of relevant experience, which helps. Growing up on a ranch taught me a fair bit about how disease moves through a population.
        Also, a great many diseases that afflict people come from cattle.
        And it’s fairly common for ranchers, cowboys, and hands to catch them in ways people don’t associate with the disease. (Word of advice, if you miss a couple weeks of school when you’re in junior high because pulling a calf resulted in an infection of Chlamydia in the blood and lungs, tell them you were kidnapped by aliens. It’d be easier to live down.)

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