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By Thom Hartmann A...
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Imagine there was something as contagious as the flu, that spread the same way the flu does, but killed more than 95% of the people who get it unless they get immediate antibiotic treatment. That disease exists, and has now infected five people in China, two currently in a hospital in Beijing.
It's the same "Black Plague" germ, Yersinia pestis, that wiped out a third to half of all of Europeans in the 14th century. But the new airborne form of it can be transmitted with a sneeze and no longer requires a rat with fleas. It's called pneumonic plague, and we are the only country in the developed world without a national healthcare system to deal with the possibility of an outbreak. It's time to change that.
-Thom