While City and State officials map out survival strategy as flea-borne armageddon closes in, President Trump weighs political pros and cons of supplying federal assistance. Trump lost Colorado in 2016 by nearly 5 percent and could face an even steeper defeat next year. Among the “cons,” aides tell Rueters, he won’t be facing “that loser” former Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2020.
August 20, 2019
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WASHINGTON/DENVER (Rueters) — Tens of millions of prairie dogs infected with The Plague — the medieval scourge of Eurasia also known as The Black Death — have virtually shut down all public activity as Denver residents shelter in place while facing their inevitable doom, city and state health officials reported today.
“The prairie dog colonies are being monitored and burrows are being treated with insecticide, but the attack is enormous and getting larger everyday,” said a spokesman for the Denver City Department of Health. “No one here thinks we can hold them off indefinitely. The dogs seems to be extraordinarily well organized and determined to do their worst.”
Prairie dogs are among the most intelligent of the rodent population with a definite social structure and beliefs system, according to leading rodentologist Victor Zeldin of SUNY Albany.
“For example, they won’t ever agree to voluntary vaccinations, fearing autism,” he told Rueters. “My colleagues in Denver believe the Colorado branch of the dogs has contracted the plague from fleas brought into their habitat by millennial hikers. These young outdoors people just don’t think about the danger they pose to animals and other humans,” Zeldin said.
But why attack Denver?
Zeldin said it could be for any number of reasons, land, water, cheap gas, class warfare, but added one stands out. “I think it has to do with Denver’s large number of BBQ joints and grills that offer non-traditional meats for lunch and dinner — including bison, elk and yes, you guessed it, prairie dogs. If you were a prairie dog, how would you respond?”
The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are being held back from assisting Denver and state agencies by the White House, said a senior official who requested anonymity out of fear he’d be sent there in the middle of the prairie dog attack.
“Trump’s holding back. What does he have to lose?” the official said. “Most of Colorado’s House reps are Democrats, the governor is a Democrat, one senator is a Democrat and the other senator, Cory Gardner, who’s Republican, couldn’t beat my grandmother for re-election next year. Not only that, Colorado is a magnet for immigrants. Adding all that together, it’s bye-bye Denver.
Despite the invention of antibiotics and modern supportive care, a disease that wiped out 60% of the European population in the 14th century has returned with a vengeance that coincides with global warming, UN scientists have warned.
In a 2017 report to the World Health Organization, a department of the United Nations, scientists reported diseases long thought to be eliminated or relegated to remote areas — bubonic plague, typhus, smallpox — are reappearing with alarming frequency and a slow rise in the earth’s temperatures is the likely reason.
Many disease organisms were frozen during the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago, but are resurfacing as the permafrost begins to thaw, WHO experts have written.
“Let’s not forget measles. Measles are staging a roaring return,” the scientists reported. “But that’s got nothing to do with climate change. It’s mostly because idiots — like those stupid prairie dogs — are refusing vaccinations for their young. Should we say it again? There is no threat of autism from the measles vaccine. But you can die or go deaf from measles.”
Those consequences haven’t dissuaded the prairie dogs from not vaccinating their own against the plague, however, said a Denver health official. “And now we’re all going to pay the price for their stubborn resistance to vaccines.”
Humans in modern times typically get the plague after being bitten by fleas that have come into contact with infected animals, or after their pets, especially cats, become infected after run-ins with these wild animals.
While zoonotic transmission, meaning when the disease moves from wild animals to humans, is “far less” common in modern times, biologists told Rueters a “significant plague risk remains” in the American West. That risk is much higher with wiley prairie dogs who show the mission discipline and determination of a Navy SEAL team, experts say.
Animals that most often catch the plague include deer mice, the California vole, the California ground squirrel, the rock squirrel, prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets, according to reports. But none is deadlier, cagier or better organized than the “Dreaded Dog,” a leading conservationist told Rueters. “When they have a plan, they’re unstoppable, kind of like those Mexican caravans. Denver doesn’t stand a chance.”
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