The plague isn’t history. Where it still exists, how it spreads and a cure

To most, the plague is an ancient nightmare, a scourge that wiped out tens of millions in medieval Europe and killed more than 20,000 people in colonial Hong Kong between 1894 and 1929. A recent death at a plague research facility in Siberia is a stark reminder that the bacterium that causes it, Yersinia pestis, was never eradicated. While modern medicine has transformed the former “Black Death” into an easily treatable bacterial infection, the disease continues to circulate quietly across the...