Pneumonic Plague Now in China

November 5, 2009

Two people have died, a town of 10,000 is under quarantine, and the area within a 17-mile radius around it has been sealed to contain a pneumonic plague outbreak:

Chinese authorities have put a whole town in quarantine after an outbreak of horrifying pneumonic plague.

Two people have died from the highly contagious disease, an even more powerful brother of The Black Death – the bubonic plague believed to have wiped out a quarter of the population of Europe in the 14th Century.

Pneumonic plague is one of the most virulent and deadly diseases on earth, usually fatal within 24 hours.

It attacks the lungs and kills nearly everyone who catches it unless they get rapid treatment with antibiotics.

A dozen people in the stricken town of Ziketan have so far been infected. The disease spreads fast and is passed from person to person by coughing.

Authorities in northwest China have sealed off the remote town of 10,000 people and begun a treatment and quarantine programme.

Residents are terrified, shops have been shuttered, homes disinfected, face masks distributed, there has been panic buying and streets are deserted, witnesses reported.

The World Health Organisation said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far were appropriate.

It looks serious, but the Chinese regime being what it is, they aren’t limited by anything in their choice of means to keep the disease from spreading. People are just worker ants for them.