Colorado reports first human plague case since 2015, but officials say there's no increased risk to

[hlthe2b]

1. Plague is endemic in the Southwest. We see die-offs in prairie dogs every year and the occasional

infected feral or outdoor cat or spread among the occasonal ground squirrel. Human cases occur sporadically, especially among veterinarians and their staff.

I remember when the DNC was held in Denver and we had a squirrel test positive in Denver's City Park. The USSS and Homeland Security went nuts, thinking it was some bioterrorism event. While Public Health and Wildlife officials tried to explain all this to them, they erected $$$$ sensors all over the place to try to detect airborne plague. Of course trying to convince them that bubonic forms of plague are not spread person-to-person, unlike the extremely rare pneumonic form of plague, was hopeless. The sensors of course, came up negative, except in the vicinity of a distant prairie dog colony, later shown to be a false positive.