6 ms·
Did the Spanish flu not evolve into our less lethal, seasonal flu?
by fach 5y ago
Did the Spanish flu not evolve into our less lethal, seasonal flu?
- paul_f 5y agoYes, this is correct. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/will-coronavirus-evolve-be-less-deadly-180976288/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/will-coronavir...
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoI don't think so. I also don't know why the black plague (Yersinia Pestis) ended. Wikipedia theories are as reliable as usual. (Not reliable)
- noduerme 5y agoYersinia Pestis is a bacterium, not a virus, and it can be killed by antibiotics. It's not gone. It's still around in fleas that live on squirrels and rats. In the mountains near where I live, the squirrels have it, and people get it every couple years. But that may or may not be what caused the black death in medieval Europe, in my view. There's reason to think it might have been a really nasty hemorhagic virus like Ebola. See: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/black-death5.htm https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/black-de...
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoAntibiotics hadn't been discovered when the black plague ended. The bubonic plague that can described today is not the black plague. There had been several pandemics of black plague, but at some point it didn't come back. Why? Maybe there was a bacteriophague virus which caused Yersinia Pestis to be lethal? (Hypothesis) But why would it be gone? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27281573/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27281573/