Pros And Cons Of Plague

Why is The Plague SO Good at Killing? There are some factors about the Yersinia pestis that make it an infecting machine. Y. pestis creates two anti-phagocytic antigens, F1 antigen and VW antigen. An anti-phagocytic antigen is defined as, a substance in the immune system’s cells that eats harmful pathogens. Both the F1 and the VW antigen are necessary for the bacteria to grow, as is the temperature, 37degrees Celsius. It is because of this need for a certain temperature, lower than which fleas need to survive, that fleas can act as a vector, or usually a parasite that transmits a disease from one animal or plant to another. This description qualifies the bubonic plague as a zoonotic infection. Another contributing factor that helps Y. pestis overcome phagocytosis is that Y. pestis is capable of inserting macrophages and immune cells with a substance called YOPS, or Yersinia Outer Proteins. Once the YOPS are in the cell, they create pores that allow a passageway for other …show more content…
For instance, meningitis, which is a swelling of the brain, septic shock, which includes sporadic blood pressures and a decrease in the activity of the kidney, brain, and possibly other organs as a result of systemic infection, necrosis and bleeding, and swelling around the heart. There is a different rate of survival for each of the manifestations of the plague. For those diagnosed with bubonic plague around thirteen percent of those will succumb. If diagnosed with septicemic plague, either primary or secondary in nature, there is a forty percent mortality rate, even with treatment. And, as discussed earlier, if pneumatic plague is not treated within the first twenty-four hours there is a one hundred percent mortality rate.12 Of all types of the plague, getting treatment can reduce the chances of death by an astonishing fifty percent.