Comment by scheme271
17 hours ago
A while ago a researcher at the Univ. of Chicago died of the plague. Although most labs use a mutated form that can't get iron needed to reproduce, he had a medical condition that caused an excess of iron in his blood that might have yet the bacteria grow.
However, every year there's a few deaths in the US from the plague because it's present in a variety of animals. If you look worldwide, there's probably on the order of a thousand deaths annually.
Wow 500$ for an NGS kit to detect it before working there would have been money well spent
In the US, chipmunks out west sometimes carry it. You go to a national park, you see a cute little chipmunk, you decide to feed it (which you're not supposed to do anyway), you get really close to it...
A few people get infected that way. Not a thousand a year, but some every few years.