A person in northern Arizona has died from a case of pneumonic plague, local health officials said.
The unidentified patient, from Coconino County, showed up to the Flagstaff Medical Center Emergency Department and died there the same day, Northern Arizona Healthcare said in a statement. It is unclear when the death occurred.
The hospital noted that “appropriate initial management” and “attempts to provide life-saving resuscitation” was performed, but “the patient did not recover.”
Rapid diagnostic testing led to a presumptive diagnosis of Yersinia pestis.
Pneumonic plague is a particularly aggressive form of the plague, where you basically need to be treated within the first 24 hours of showing symptoms in order to have much chance of surviving, and you can die in as little as a day and a half. Initial symptoms include fever, weakness, nausea and headaches, aka the same symptoms as probably >90% of the illnesses most of us contract, so I can see how it would be easy to underestimate the severity of it, until you start coughing up blood.
Further, while I don’t know this person’s circumstances, in a country where there’s no guarantee of either universal healthcare or paid sick time and protections for workers who call off work when ill, I can easily see how someone might say “Eh, it’s just a cold, but I’ll tough it out, because I can’t afford to go to the doctor and/or miss work,” when they notice some of the milder and less remarkable symptoms, then wake up the next day coughing up blood and already be screwed.
There are accounts from the Black Death saying some person was fine in the morning and dead by sundown in the street after coughing up blood.