User blog comment:EiplecOco/Bubonic plus Pneumonic/@comment-32656-20140331152221

The problem with that is, it doesn't explain a lot of how we know, with regards to patterns, that it spread.

For instance, we know that it first came into Europe via trading ships fleeing Mongol sieges around the Black Sea.

Had the plague been Pneumonic in nature, those ships would not have arrived in port - they'd have either sunk or been found adrift somewhere.

For that matter, spreading in a Pneumonic way has to have a slow, fairly unobserved, rate of death and transmission. If it is too fast, then it dies out before it expands very far. Classic problem with diseases in general, and a fair part of why disease timelines tend to be ASB.

The study really doesn't explain a reason for the rapid infection and spread. All it actually indicates is that under the right conditions - i.e. large concentrations of poor, starved, people - it went airborne.