Two people were just recently diagnosed with having pneumonic plague while at a hospital in China. The two individuals are a married couple.

This form of the plague is much more infectious than the bubonic plague that struck Europe during the Dark Ages. This was known as the Black Death.

Between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed an estimated 75-200 million people across Eurasia.

This form of plague that these two people contracted is can be far deadlier and is certainly fatal if not treated immediately. By immediately, I mean that you’ll die within a few days if left untreated.

According to The Daily Wire,

The pair contracted the disease near their home in Inner Mongolia, making them the second such couple to have contracted the plague in that general region since May, when a Mongolian couple died from eating raw organ meat from an infected marmot, CNN reports. The husband contracted the disease first and was nursed by the wife until she also fell ill.

“Plague, caused by bacteria and transmitted through flea bites and infected animals, can develop in three different forms. Bubonic plague causes swollen lymph nodes, while septicemic plague infects the blood and pneumonic plague infects the lungs,” CNN continues. “Pneumonic — the kind the Chinese patients have — is more virulent and damaging. Left untreated, it is always fatal, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Most people don’t think that the plague can still happen, but it can. But on the plus side, we have antibiotics now and our medical knowledge and technology are far more sophisticated than what it was 700 years ago.

I find it very interesting that something like this disease can just show up seemingly out of nowhere. You think that for someone to get the plague that someone else would have to have the plague. But it actually comes up occasionally. There were hundreds of cases reported in Madagascar in 2017.