O/T Meningitis, is there more than usual?

[Diane Smith]

Just wondering if there is a bit of an outbreak going on, I know of two people with it at present, one a man in his forties, lives in lincs, he was having to have an op, and I haven't yet heard how he is, the other a child at my kids school, Peterborough poor things, I hope they both make full recoveries. 

[Mandeigh]

Just read that Peter Andre...Jordan's other half is in hospital with suspected meningitis too......hope there's not an epidemic... 

[1 morejump]

All I really know about it is that there are two kinds, bacterial MG and viral MG.  Of those two the viral is way worse, the bacterial form is much easier to get over.  While we're talking about odd diseases though, 4 dead squirrles and 1 dead rabbit tested positive for the plague yesterday in Denver civic park and the zoo.   

[Mandeigh]

what...THE plague???   

[1 morejump]

what...THE plague???

Its not as rare as you might think, especially out here .  It is carried by fleas and luckly in our case is only in rodent fleas, don't ask what the difference is but they tell us that the chances of a person or a dog/cat getting it are low.  Prairie dogs carry it quite readily out here and it just happened to make it into the city somehow .

[Diane Smith]

I hope there isn't an outbreak it's such a terrible disease :( things are meant to come in 3's, so with Peter Andre, that's the 3, I hope I don't hear of anymore cases.

Plague it still exists?

[hinny_heart]

what...THE plague???   

It's funny, but we as Western Europeans are positively paranoid about "THE PLAGUE" - with reason I suppose, as it played such a huge part in pre-industrial revolution history, and has even become part of the folklore. It was always an imported, epidemic disease - I don't think it was ever endemic in western Europe - and all the more scary for that.  
Here's a map -
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/world98.htm
and you can see that Yersinia pestis is endemic to large parts of the world including large parts of N and S America, Africa, Asia and Eurasia.

The last urban plague epidemic in the US occurred in Los Angeles sometime in the mid 1920's.

There are some really excellent books available about the influence of diseases of various types on human history and indeed on civilisation itself.

Plague itself is relatively simple to treat with rapid diagnosis and the right antibiotics, but still has a mortality of about 15% - 20%, if I remember rightly, this being mainly from the pneumonic form which has the ability to kill before the patient has even got to medical care, never mind been diagnosed.

[Emma_R]

Plague it still exists?

My thoughts exactly!

Thanks HH, interesting to see how the places we grow up influence our perceptions of...well everything but in this case illness/disease. 

[hinny_heart]

Hey, when I first went to work in Saudi Arabia I was shocked to the core to see and meet apparently ordinary normal people around my own age who were dreadfully scarred by smallpox.

It brought home to me just WHY smallpox was considered such a horror when it was endemic in Britain, and how even the plainest or even ugly woman was considered to be beautiful if she did not have pock marks on her face.