Pneumonic Plague--Are You Ready?

Disclaimer.  I am not a licensed health practitioner.  This is just another post on an item you might wish to have available if needed so that a physician can treat you and your family as best as possible.  No medication, including those available over the counter, should be taken without consulting a physician.  Information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only.  It is not medical advice nor a substitute for licensed medical care.  A qualified, licensed physician or other medical provider should be consulted before beginning any herbal or conventional treatment.


Well, we knew the fun couldn't last.  With the Delta variant (I guess the Greek letters make it sound scarier) of COVID now threatening every man, woman, and child, some of our Communist overlords are again ruling that us peons wear face masks again in public.  (It appears that Nevada's new mandates are the most draconian in the country, but I wouldn't put it past other Democrat-controlled states to require face masks again in the near future.)  Never mind that they are as effective at preventing the spread of the virus as chain link fences are at preventing mosquito bites.  Never let logic stand in the way of instilling fear in the feeble-minded and controlling the masses.

With all the chatter last week about requiring face masks again, I decided to pick up a couple of extra boxes of face masks that were clearance-priced at Smith's--10 masks for 99 cents.  Today the exact same masks were out on tables again--$4.99 for the same 10 masks.  We might need a few for going to church, since it doesn't matter whether people are vaccinated or not--everyone gets to wear masks indoors.  Fortunately for most of you, face masks are not being required.  In addition, they are being sold at clearance prices in many areas.  And while they are completely ineffective against COVID, there are some diseases where they do hinder the spread of microbes.  Pneumonic plague is one of them.

Bubonic plague was making the scene in Los Angeles a few years back, and local officials there didn't appear to be all that concerned about it.  They certainly didn't do anything more than wringing their hands.  They refused to deal with the homeless because it is their right to live that way.  Forget Oliver Wendell Holmes who said the right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.  Like it or not, the homeless fist of bubonic plague is swinging and someone's going to get hit soon.  Even if the form of plague were to remain bubonic, it's still bad.  But the potential to convert to the pneumonic form puts everyone in swinging range, even those hundreds of miles away.

Yes, of course, we have antibiotics to treat bubonic and pneumonic plague.  These drugs and modern medical care work wonders, if the dosages are correct, if administered at the first signs of illness, and if the patient gets hospital care.  Hmmm....

Let's see:  The plague is already circulating among the rats and homeless.  The homeless will probably die in the street first.  Some will get taken to the hospital for initial care, but as they start to recover and feel better, they will demand to be released.  Because Los Angeles and California have no backbone to confine them and force treatment, they don't complete the treatment, the plague spreads, and then we also create the conditions for superbugs to develop.  But as long as the form of plague remains bubonic, the rest of the country can breathe easily.

However, sooner or later in the ludicrous political environment and public health hellhole, pneumonic plague is going to appear at the party.  You see, you can think of pneumonic plague as a very gregarious party animal bacteria.  It shows up in the lungs and finds itself all alone.  So it breaks down the barriers and invites every flippin' pathogen in, and they all work together to completely trash the lungs.  Even with the best antibiotic treatment from the time symptoms appear, a heckuva lot of people are going to die.  Oh, and keep in mind that this is the pneumonic form.  It's now airborne.  In the biggest city in the country.  With the highest homeless population.  With a spineless government and completely inept officials unwilling to do anything about it.

And so it spreads.  And pneumonic plague looks like a lot of other illnesses--pneumonia, influenza, etc.  If you're a nice middle class person living in a nice middle class neighborhood fifty or a hundred miles from LA, and you come down with flu-like symptoms, what are you going to think you have?  Influenza?  Or pneumonic plague?  Normalcy bias alert--most people are going to go with influenza.  Until it's too late.  And so it spreads further.

Are there going to be enough antibiotics to go around?  Remember, it's California we're talking about, and then governments everywhere.  Planning on them planning to have antibiotics for you is probably not a good idea.  So do you have your antibiotics on hand?  Enough for you and your family?  And anyone else who shows up at your door?

There is precious little information on pneumonic plague in the survival medicine books.  Antibiotics may work if they are started in time, but that's a pretty big if, at least in the early stages of an epidemic.  Now once people have figured out that pneumonic plague is in the neighborhood, proper treatment will be able to be initiated sooner, and better yet, prophylactic measures can be taken.

In addition to the general influenza- and pneumonia-like symptoms that patients exhibit, within one to three days of exposure the patient will begin coughing up blood and develop chest pain and shortness of breath.  Left untreated, the individual will probably die within 48 hours.  So what do you do if you suspect plague is in the air?

First off, institute strict quarantine for ill individuals and isolate everyone but the caregiver(s).  Everyone gets face masks and gloves.  The following are the standard treatment protocols per the CDC and off-grid medicine books:

• Prophylactic treatment (for those who have been exposed to pneumonic plague, but are not sick)
• doxycycline, 100 mg every 12 hours for the first day, then 100 mg per day for 7 days, OR
• ciprofloxacin, 500 mg every 12 hours for 7 days.
• For sick individuals, any one of the following options
• doxycycline, 100 mg every 12 hours the first day, then 100 mg per day for 10 days;
• minocycline, 100 mg every 12 hours the first day, then 100 mg per day for 10 days;
• ciprofloxacin, 500-750 mg every 12 hours for 14 days;
• levofloxacin, 500 mg per day for 10-14 days;
• moxifloxacin, 400 mg per day for 10-14 days.

Most sources state that the antibiotics are taken for 10-14 days, or until 2 days after the fever subsides.

Ninety-seven years ago Los Angeles experienced an outbreak of pneumonic plague.  It was a time when the threat was taken seriously, quarantine measures were implemented, and public health officers scoured affected neighborhoods for contacts and suspected illnesses.  People were generally cooperative.  And yet, government officials still had their petty disagreements about managing the situation.  Public health services received only half the amount of money requested to eradicate the plague and the rats.  Money that should have been spent where people were living was instead funneled to the harbor areas, because shutting down the ports due to plague would have caused substantial economic losses.  Local government instituted a news blackout for Los Angeles and  refused to let the public know it was plague and called it instead "a strange malady" and "malignant pneumonia."   Fortunately, other California cities reported more accurately.  The whole situation was poorly managed then.  With the current political climate, one shouldn't expect it to be any better when a true outbreak occurs.

Links to related posts:
Acquiring Antibiotics
Tularemia
Typhus--Making Sure LA's Problem Doesn't Become Yours

For further reading: 
https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2595158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3286930/
https://www.breitbart.com/health/2019/07/19/dr-drew-pinsky-bubonic-plague-outbreak-imminent-in-los-angeles/ 

 08.06.2019