NEWARK, New Jersey (AP)—Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk.
Read More….
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/15/missing.mice.ap/index.html

Remember…..only a small risk….....

I read that story yesterday and that was definitely the part that caught my attention “scant risk to the public”.

The reasons listed were fairly legitimate, mice would die of disease, be eaten by predators etc. but I expected the reasons to include something about the disease not being able to spread to humans, they did not mention it because the disease can be spread to humans which in my opinion increases the public risk to something more than “scant”

You probably have a higher risk of contracting the Hantavirus then contracting The Black Death from a couple of missing lab mice but still, I think the risk has been portrayed as less than what it is.

Btw, the Hantavirus is contracted by inhaling dried deer mouse droppings…obviously they have to dry to the point where they disseminate into the air as dust particles. A 21 year old girl died of this disease in a town I was living in (Mammoth Lakes, CA.) back in 1990.

Bubonic plague still exists in the wild with sporadic outbreaks.  I doubt a few infected mice will add much to the risk of contracting it.  I remember reading somewhere that the current death rate is below 5%, and in the US is mostly found in southwestern states.

On a related note, I found this quite interesting.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2002/04/04-23-02tdc/04-23-02dscihealth-04.asp

About 15 or so years ago, my hometown newspaper reported warnings, because the town was in the process of trying to kill of the rats at the dump as there were plague carrier rats there.

Charybdis - 16 September 2005 02:18 PM

Bubonic plague still exists in the wild with sporadic outbreaks.  I doubt a few infected mice will add much to the risk of contracting it.  I remember reading somewhere that the current death rate is below 5%, and in the US is mostly found in southwestern states.

On a related note, I found this quite interesting.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2002/04/04-23-02tdc/04-23-02dscihealth-04.asp

oops, so much for my Black Death comment…interesting article though Chary

There actually would be little risk to the public if the mice were infected with normal bubonic plague as it’s easily treated with antibiotics these days. The danger would be if they had been used to test the strain of antibiotic-resistant plague or pneumonic plague.
Plague outbreaks are still quite common these days, and it was only 11 years ago that there was a major outbreak in Surat. It’s not a middle ages disease like most people think.