Filigree Siberian Hamsters

Ok so I am having a bit of a wobble at the moment.

Yesterday, in fact the whole weekend was a nightmare of depression and violent emotion.  I wrote my first suicide note.  Lousy grammar.
When it came down to it the only thing holding me back was an inherent unwillingness to hurt others.  I had managed to get myself somewhere where I couldnt top myself without causing property damage.  Such are the tricks I am having to play on my mind at the moment to divert it from it's avowed mission.
To make matters even better my eyes are playing up.
But my attention has been drawn to a recent story about rats.

'Gerbils replace rats' as main cause of Black Death

What nonsense.

Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests

Oh dear.

The problem is again one of scientific illiteracy.  Or headline mongering.  From the headline you would assume that the rat didnt spread the plague.  Of course it did.  Thre is a difference between the reservoir and the vector.
As far as I knew nobody much had thought the rat was the reservoir for plague for about 40 years.  certainly in 1976 William Mcneill wrote a whole book, Plagues and peoples, on the uncontroversial idea that it was a rodent resrvoir of some kind of marmot or prairie dog living in mongolia.  The rat was the vector.
So now we have simply a change of reservoir.  the vector remains the same.  the rat is as much to blame as it has been for 40 years.

The BBC should be ashamed of itself.  And start employing scientists to write science stories rather than the current wunch of ignoramuses.