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A wild rabbit infected with the bubonic plague was eaten by a man, and he became the third person in the country to recently contact the plague in the country.
Bubonic plague, long thought to be all but extinct, is typically passed from fleas to small mammals like rabbits or mice before passing to humans.
The 55-year-old man who has been diagnosed with the plague is the third such case in the Xilingol League province in Inner Mongolia, China. The other two cases, which are pneumonic plague, are considered to be unrelated by officials. However, the man was not the only person to eat the rabbit officials think was responsible for the infection.
28 of the man’s contacts also ingested some of the likely-infected rabbit, and they have been quarantined by officials until they can determine if they are sick. While the plague isn’t nearly the dangerous killer it once was, thanks to modern medicine, it is still fatal if left untreated or treated improperly.
The bubonic version of the plague was responsible for the Black Death, which wiped out nearly one-third of all Europeans in the middle ages. To this day, the sheer scale of the loss of life from that event has been unmatched by wars and diseases of later eras.
The plague itself is a highly unpleasant disease. Caused by the yersinia pestis bacteria strain, it rapidly attacks the immune system and causes severe swelling of glands in the armpits and groin. The resulting fever and gangrene make the disease a horrifying sight to see playing out on a person.
Thankfully, with the help of modern medicine, the disease can be treated and isn’t nearly as deadly as it once was.
While the plague has been all but wiped out in China, there are still a few scattered cases, primarily among hunters. This is because hunters venture into deeply wooded areas and commonly come into contact with fleas and small mammals that could carry the disease.
However, in recent years, China has worked to develop better responses to the disease and better detection of cases in the early stages. Thankfully, their efforts have greatly reduced the number of cases of plague, while also reducing the number of deaths from infection.
