spoil me!

Oh: early and late cases in an epidemic (see Kristen Lavrensdatter, by Sigrid Unset) are frequently not fatal. So the ending is not preposterous. Of course she was talking about the plague that wiped out 1/3 of Europe, not an isolated incident in Paris.

It had nothing to do with whether plague cases were early or late. It had to do with the type you contracted. There are three forms--Bubonic, Pneumonic and Septicemic, which are basically the same except for how they are contracted. Bubonic is contracted by flea bites, Pneumonic by the passing of infected sputum from patient to patient, and I'm not sure they yet know how Septicemic is contracted. It may be a form of Pneumonic that creates sepsis.

For mortality rates, even Bubonic is 30-75% and would have been about 80% during the time period of the film (before antibiotics) because there was no effective treatment. It kills in about eight days. Pneumonic has a mortality rate with treatment of 40% or higher (*if* it's caught early). Without, it's over 90%. It kills within about 48 hours. The mortality rate for Septicemic is about 100%, probably because it is the rarest and can kill within hours.

Another fun-scary fact--Pneumonic becomes the most common in areas of dense population, such as cities, hence why everyone freaks out. All of the larger cities in the Middle Ages that were hit saw a mortality rate of 50-70%. Think about that--seven out of ten of your neighbors, family, and friends died and you and the other two survivors had to bury them.

The mortality rate of the Black Death is in some dispute. The idea that a third of Europe died does not come from scientific estimates so much as a French writer at the time, Froissart, who guessed (from the Book of Revelation) that "a third of the world died." Current estimates range between 30-70% of the European population, partly because death tolls varied widely. Germany and England were "relatively" hit less hard with maybe 20%, but it seems that the Mediterranean area may have seen a mortality rate of over 75%.

In addition, all of Eurasia (and North Africa) was hit, but we don't know as much about the other areas. The Middle East probably lost around 40% (keeping in mind that it was more densely populated and that they therefore may have lost *more* people than Europe, as a result). Estimates worldwide range from 75 to 200 million (personally, from what I've read, I lean more toward the 200 million mark). A lot depends on how many people were living in the world. It's generally believed to be about 500 million, so Froissart, surprisingly, may have been correct in his guesstimate, at least for the whole world population.

Plague is a very, very scary thing. The plague we have now is basically the same as the one that hit seven centuries ago. It really hasn't evolved much at all. Apparently, it didn't need to. It is also endemic in all sorts of rodent populations (including in the western United States) and continued to hit Europe until the mid-17th century, with persistent local outbreaks, known as the Third Pandemic, as late as 2014. It is also believed by some historians to have been the infamous Justinian Plague in the 6th century CE.

The hope is that with antibiotics and modern sanitation, we can prevent future pandemics, but it's hard to say. People speculate a lot about world-killing pandemics, but Plague is the only one with that kind of an historical track record.

The people in the hotel were being incredibly (and even criminally) selfish, since others could easily have been infected and the whole place should have been put under quarantine. But such fears were very common in plague cities.

Innsmouth Free Press http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com

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