1924 Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak

1924 Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak
Downtown area of Los Angeles, California
DiseasePneumonic plague
SourceRats[1]
LocationLos Angeles, California, United States
Index caseJesús Lajun[2]
DateSeptember 28, 1924[1] to November 13, 1924[3]
Suspected cases‡37 (clinically diagnosed)[3]
Deaths
30[4]
‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out.

The 1924 Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak was an outbreak of the pneumonic plague in Los Angeles, California that began on September 28, 1924, and was declared fully contained on November 13, 1924.[3] It represented the first time that the plague had emerged in Southern California since plague outbreaks had previously surfaced in San Francisco and Oakland. The suspected reason for this outbreak was a rat epizootic where squirrels that were found to be plague infected were secondarily infected by rats. Due to the evidence of infected squirrels near San Luis Obispo County as late as July 1924 and the migration habits of both squirrels and rats, it is thought that squirrels were the original source of the plague outbreak in Los Angeles.[5]

The outbreak killed 30 people and infected several more.[4] Public health officials credited the lessons learned from the San Francisco outbreak with saving lives, and swiftly implemented preventative measures, including hospitalization of the sick and all their contacts, a neighborhood quarantine, and a large-scale rat eradication program.[4][6][7][8] The epicenter of the plague was in the Macy Street District, primarily home to Mexican immigrants, which was also known as "Little Mexico".[4][9] Racism against Mexican Americans tainted the reaction to the plague, an issue not made public until the outbreak concluded.[10][11] This outbreak was the last instance of aerosol transmission of the plague[12] and the last major plague outbreak in the United States.[13]

  1. ^ a b Feldinger, Frank (2008). A Slight Epidemic: The Government Cover-Up of the Black Plague in Los Angeles What Happened and Why it Matters. United States of America: Silver Lake Publishing. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-1-56343-885-1.
  2. ^ Feldinger, Frank (2008). A Slight Epidemic: The Government Cover-Up of the Black Plague in Los Angeles What Happened and Why it Matters. United States of America: Silver Lake Publishing. pp. 51. ISBN 978-1-56343-885-1.
  3. ^ a b c Feldinger, Frank (2008). A Slight Epidemic: The Government Cover-Up of the Black Plague in Los Angeles What Happened and Why it Matters. United States of America: Silver Lake Publishing. pp. 124–130. ISBN 978-1-56343-885-1.
  4. ^ a b c d Viseltear, AJ (February 28, 1974). "The pneumonic plague epidemic of 1924 in Los Angeles". The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. 47 (1): 40–54. PMC 2595158. PMID 4596466.
  5. ^ Lien-Teh, Wu (1926). "A Treatise of Pneumonic Plague". League of Nations Health Organization.
  6. ^ Jacob L. Kool. Risk of Person to Person Transmission of Pneumonic Plague. Clin. Infect. Dis. (2005) 40 (8): 1166-1172.
  7. ^ "CDC - Maps & Statistics - Plague". CDC.gov. 2013-04-23. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
  8. ^ Martin Helen Eastman, The History of Los Angeles County Hospital, 1878–1968; and the Los Angeles County University of Southern California Medical Center 1969–1978. (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1979) 5–7.
  9. ^ Meares, Hadley (2020-04-09). "When the plague came to Los Angeles". Curbed LA. Retrieved 2024-04-28.
  10. ^ Feldinger, Frank (2008). A Slight Epidemic: The Government Cover-up of the Black Plague in Los Angeles What Happened and Why it Matters. United States of America: Silver Lake Publishing. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-1-56343-885-1.
  11. ^ Anderson, Elizabeth T. (1974). "Plague in the Continental United States, 1900-76". Public Health Reports. 93 (3): 297–301. PMC 1431896. PMID 349602.
  12. ^ "Ecology and Transmission | Plague". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. July 31, 2019. Archived from the original on 2012-06-20. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
  13. ^ Weise, Elizabeth (July 26, 2013). "Why you don't need to worry about getting the plague". USA Today. Archived from the original on 2013-07-27. Retrieved January 2, 2021.