Talk:Pasteurella
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I have been wondering about the mild impact Y. pestis had when introduced into the Americas a century ago. One would think, if this were "plague", i.e. something with the virulence of the Black Death, that it would have ripped thru the Americas like ... plague. One would especially expect it to affect native Americans, but it does not seem to have had any significant effect on them. If anything, the effect was less than it had been in the Old World in the pandemic that brought it here. Here, it infected a few dozen people and went sylvan in the rodent population.
Is there a native Pasteurella or Yersinia organism that accounts for native resistance?
Has any genetic analysis been done to find the origins of Y. pestis? Is there any chance that it is actually a new-world disease that was carried back by, for example, Carthegenian traders?Tomligon 20:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)