Yersinia pestis in 3... 2... 1...

From the London Daily Mail:

Rat sightings are up 60% in NYC since Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed Sanitation Department's budget by $100M - leaving piles of garbage to stack up on sidewalks as officials warn city will be 'overrun' by rodents without action

• • The troubling spike in rodent encounters has been attributed to a recent change in procedure spurred by a $100M cut to the Department of Sanitation's budget
  • instead of collecting trash in the Big Apple every day, trash collections are now made by the sanitation department just three times per week as of June
  • In April less than 1,000 rat sightings were reported in the city, but after the collection change was implemented that number ballooned to 1,650
  • The growing infestation is having a profound effect on local restaurants and tourism – two industries already reeling from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
  • A number of politicians gathered in Harlem on Tuesday to pressure the city, insisting the collection change has created 'a welcome mat for the rats'

A number of politicians gathered in Harlem on Tuesday to pressure the city's government to reverse course. New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said the current policy has created a ‘welcome mat for the rats of our city’.

‘These rats have the run of New York City,’ Stringer continued about the infestation. ‘These rats are walking around waiting for a table at outdoor seating.’

Yersinia pestis? From Infogalactic:

Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a gram-negative, nonmotile, rod-shaped coccobacillus, with no spores. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans via the Oriental rat flea. It causes the disease plague, which takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic and bubonic plagues. All three forms were responsible for a number of high-mortality epidemics throughout human history, including: the sixth century's Plague of Justinian; the Black Death, which accounted for the death of at least one-third of the European population between 1347 and 1353; and the Third Pandemic, sometimes referred to as the Modern Plague, which began in the late nineteenth century in China and spread by rats on steamboats claiming close to 10,000,000 lives. These plagues likely originated in China and were transmitted west via trade routes. Recent research indicates that the pathogen may have been the cause of what is described as the Neolithic Decline, when European populations declined significantly. This would push the date to much earlier and might be indicative of an origin in Europe rather than Eurasia.

In other words, the Black Plague. Lovely.