Black Death?

Yikes -- I missed this in the paper last week. A woman in California was hospitalized with Bubonic Plague. It's the first case since 1984, and is unusual because it occured in LA, not in a rural area.

We get outbreaks of plague in the prairie dog population every year or so in Colorado -- usually a few animals get it, and we've had nine human deaths since 1957. Erie had an outbreak in the empty field out behind our old house a few years ago.

Scary stuff, although we have adequate antibiotics nowadays and are unlikely to lose half or more of the population.