The Eternal Return of the Plague
The plague conjures up images of the medieval Black Death, and perhaps the vaguely reassuring sense that, in the developed world, such dangers are a scourge of the past. But, as the recent outbreak in Madagascar makes clear, the upper hand humans have over the plague today is tenuous and almost certainly transient.
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NORMAN, OKLAHOMA – “Fearsome Plague Epidemic Strikes Madagascar.” That recent New York Times headline might sound like the synopsis of a horror movie. The epidemic gripping Madagascar is not just any plague, and it certainly isn’t some Hollywood apocalypse. It’s the plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, agent of the notorious bubonic plague.