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originally posted by: crazyewok
originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: crazyewok
I agree that there are still a number of things they don't know. One of them, if I remember right is just exactly why the Plague got so virulent. It seems to be a disease that suddenly breaks out of its cage and runs rampant, and as far as I've been able to determine, no one really knows why.
All the mechanisms are in place for it to spread like it did, but it more or less stays confined to the regions and species where it's endemic. However, every so often in history ... BOOM! And they don't understand precisely why it gets set off, whether it's because it mutates and gets slightly more virulent or whether other environmental factors have to come into play or some combination of the two.
And that's one puzzle.
But I really do remember reading about the gerbil link.
The other was the huge variations in mortality rate between towns, some of which could be next to each other.
And the variations in symptoms.
In some places you got the normaly ratio of septic/pnemonic plague and in other places it was way off.
Im with the opinion another pathogen may have mades its rounds at the same time but was just not noticed as back then there was no way to tell the diffrence.