23: Before COVID, there was Bubonic Plague in San Fran
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What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the Library of Dark History. Welcome! Hi, applause. Thank you so much. So this is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who think, hey, is history really as boring as it seemed in school? Oh, nay nay. This is where we can learn together and talk about the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories our teacher never told us about.

I always get super out of breath when I do the intro. Let me just breathe for a second. Okay, so today's story, it takes place in San Francisco. Have you been there? Yes, no, maybe. Okay, so today's story is very interesting. We're going to be talking about a plague. I know we're kind of exhausted about plagues. Well, is COVID a plague? No, it's a virus. But today's story is about a plague. It's kind of like a sister. Maybe you've heard of the bubonic plague.

Yeah? Okay? Bubonic plague, what's that? It started in Europe, but then it like came to San Francisco. It was delivered to Jorno, San Francisco. The bubonic plague was hand delivered to San Francisco. Okay. So when looking into the bubonic plague, because I realized like, I really didn't know that much about it, honestly. Like I thought it had to do with boobs and it has nothing to do with boobs. It's B-U, bubonic, boo, ghost, but not really.

Anyway, so I was looking into it and I was like, oh my God, this is like really similar to the COVID outbreak in 2020. And I thought there is no way that this is as similar as it was because it really was so similar. And I'm laughing because it's kind of embarrassing that history really did repeat itself in a way. Yeah, it's kind of disappointing, isn't it? Well, that's okay. Maybe we'll learn this time. Let's try and stay optimistic, okay? Okay.

But let's back up a bit because maybe you're like, what is the bubonic plague in the first place, Bailey? What are you rambling about? So let me just go through that really quick, okay? So let me grab my dark history book over here and I'm gonna turn to the bubonic plague chapter, which is in here somewhere. Oh, that's Michelangelo. Oh, here it is. Bubonic plague. Boo. Bonic. Plague. Great. So let's go on a journey.

Ooh, okay. Making myself comfortable because the year is 1347. Yes, it's hard to imagine a time like that. But a fleet of ships carrying different types of cargo, like salt and wheat, it arrived in Sicily, which is like a little island off the southern coast of Italy. I think it's part of the boot.

I hear there's a boot in Italy. Anyway, so these ships arrive in the port and they're full of people. Now normally they pull up and the sailors come off and like they're super excited to see everyone on land. They're like, "Fuck yeah, we made it." You know? So they're on land, they start unloading their stuff and it's a whole thing. They're super jazzed. Yay. But these ships were different, okay? These sailors came off of the boat and they were basically, not exaggerating, zombies.

Zombies. They were super sick, the people, and they were dragging their feet. They were covered in skin boils and lesions. Yeah. Drama. So nobody knew what was wrong with them, but everybody who got sick or appeared to be sick died. A few days later, a little light fever shows up in some of the locals, right? They're like, I'm sick. And like, it just kind of, it's a little, it's a little suspish. Okay. Okay.

The disease that walked off the ship with those men is now known as the bubonic plague. But at this time, everybody called it the great dying. This would go on to kill almost everyone it touched and nobody even knew how it was spreading in the first place. But everyone in Europe was getting it. And eventually it would kill up to half of the population of the entire Western world. A half of the population, bitch.

That's a lot. Entire cities were destroyed by this disease. When ships would arrive with six sailors, they were called death ships. So many people died in the 14th century that the entire system of government in Europe collapsed. Yeah, this thing was crazy. It was crazy deadly and honestly a bit mysterious too.

Nobody knew what caused this disease, but eventually it kind of tapered off over time and there were less death ships coming and going and it just seemed like it was disappearing for the time being, you know? So good times, LOL. Let's jump ahead in time to the beautiful coastal golden city of San Francisco in the mid 1800s. The city had become extremely popular by this point. So it was like this new place filled with new opportunity, right?

They had trolley cars, the biggest shipping port on the West Coast, and the chance of finding gold and striking it rich back during the California Gold Rush. What I'm getting at is there's a lot going on, okay? You could literally go from rags to riches. Immigrants from all over the place and even Americans from the East were looking to get rich fast on the West Coast. And some did.

I mean, fun fact, blue jeans were actually invented at this time because they needed durable clothing to withstand the demands of this brave new world. And like the wool they were wearing just wasn't cutting it. So jeans were invented. We love that. Oh my gosh. Actually, I won't get into it because I'm reading this book.

about the guy who invented copper and like he started to work with a jeans company. It's wild. I'll tell you about it later. So by 1899, the gold rush was over, which is weird because it's like, how did it just die? It doesn't matter because jobs started drying up as more and more people moved pretty much out there, you know, because everyone's going out there trying to find gold. There's no more gold. People are like, now what? We're stuck.

So a whole lot of people who didn't find gold were in the market for just any job that was available. But a lot of them just didn't exist yet. On top of that, there was a huge wave of Chinese immigrants who were key to the creation of so many of California's new industries like railroads. Oh my gosh, this is just like that book I'm reading. I gotta tell you guys about this book. I'll talk about it later, but I gotta tell you about it.

Anyways, plus San Francisco is like a really small city and there isn't a lot of space out there. So it was like everyone's just kind of – it's overcrowding is happening. And a lot of living conditions were a little on the rough side. The cost to actually run the city went through the freaking roof, okay? And the city of San Francisco was no longer the hot destination to create a new life. I mean everybody was already there.

It was getting a reputation as a poor and dirty city. Well, the politicians started to get a little nervous about this and decided San Francisco needed to be cleaned up a bit. But whenever a city in any time period tries to spend money and make big changes, they always have to take that money away from something else.

Well, in San Francisco, they chose to take that money away from the Department of Public Health to start rebuilding some of the buildings downtown so they could make room for the more and more people that were coming in. Also improve some of the roads and just other basic city needs to try and manage this huge population growth.

But they couldn't just fix things overnight, right? It takes time. And as they tried to fix it, the problems in the city only got worse. There are huge cracks in the buildings, a lot of trash in the streets, and no government department was really monitoring any of this because of the budget cuts. Because of these dirty conditions, there were rats just everywhere living their best lives. Like if you were a rat, this is where you want to be, you know? Ninja Turtles, rats, Master Splinter.

The city was in bad shape is what we're getting at. And you had the middle class white people upset because the Chinese immigrants were stealing their jobs. According to them, more and more people becoming just so poor that they were forced to live in filthy conditions. Rats are calling the shots around the city and the health department had no money.

It just wasn't a great place to live. And it had all of the perfect ingredients for a plague. Like a concoction is a brewing.

So welcome to the summer of 1899 in San Francisco. One day, a ship coming from Hong Kong pulls into the bay. It has a big yellow flying flag high on the ship. Great. So when they have a yellow flag on the ship, it means there's a disease on board. I didn't know that. Isn't that interesting?

Now this ship was a special one because there had been reports that when this ship made a pit stop in Hawaii, some of the crew members looked real sick, okay? So they were forced to stop in Hawaii for a while just to quarantine and like figure it out. And now they were pulling up in San Francisco with that yellow flag still going strong and everyone was like, what's the deal? What's the deal, you know? Are these people like deathly ill?

Are they just coughing? Are we all going to die? Like, what's going on? Well, just to be safe, the San Francisco health inspector decided to hold this ship in quarantine for a week while they're figuring out, like, what's going on and kind of what to do from there. During this time, there was a lot of action. First, they found out that the disease they had discovered back in Hawaii was none other than the Black Plague.

Yes, that horrifying disease that killed half of Europe 550 years ago, she was making a comeback. It was also called the bubonic plague or just plague. So it's almost as if those creepy zombie plague ships disappeared, time traveled and appeared on the San Francisco shores for part two, revenge of the bubonic plague.

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Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. Cure for the plague at this time. And what they needed to do was prevent it from spreading further, right?

So they're disinfecting everything and everyone on board the ship, but they quickly discovered that while traveling from Hawaii to San Francisco, one lady died from this sickness and they threw her body overboard to prevent her corpse from spreading the sickness even more.

And of course, it didn't actually help because there was already another dead person on board who looked like he died from the same exact disease. So they took some tissue samples from this dead body and brought them to our first main character, Dr. Joseph Kinyun. Luckily, Dr. Joe figured out that the dead guy from the boat hadn't died from the plague, so like

"Hooray, no plague." Dr. Joe was like, "That's great, that's cool. Here we go, it's under control." So he let everyone leave the boat, right? Come on off, everything's great. And that's great, but something fishy was still going on. Ships didn't sail around raising yellow flags for no reason. Like that wasn't the rules. You put a yellow flag up for a reason. So what was the damn reason y'all? Pause, exactly.

Well, one day later, two bloated and decaying bodies were found by a fisherman in the bay. The guy who found the bodies saw that they had life vests on and the life vest showed that they were from the same boat that showed up with the yellow flag. They just like pushed these people overboard or something. The coroner determined that they had clothes tied around them, which indicated that they jumped from the boat and tried to swim to shore. Now, why would they do something like that? Question mark.

Well, it's because they were infected with the plague and knew that when the boat docked, they would never be able to get off and they would die on that ship.

Because remember, once you had the plague, there was no cure. Most people just died a brutal, ugly, awful death. It wasn't unheard of to recover from the plague, but it was incredibly rare. And these people were so desperate to start a new life in San Francisco, they hoped that maybe it could like just, if they could just get to shore and see the city, visit a doctor, maybe they could get some healing on their own, right? Yeah.

Unfortunately, though, they drowned before they could get there. But the important thing is that when the coroner saw these bodies, a different doctor than Dr. Joe was the one to declare that they were infected with the plague. How did this make Joe feel? Well, Joe was fucking pissed.

Okay? He just got finished telling everyone that there was no plague. Everyone was fine and not to worry. And now this other doctor was saying, oh, excuse me, hi, yeah, two people had died because they had the plague. So even though we have the first signs of a major problem and people are showing up dead, Dr. Joe has to go and make it all about himself and his fragile little ego. And he's like,

No, no, nay, nay. I looked at those bodies. No plague. And that other doctor is just a stupid ass fool. That's what he's telling the people, right?

The problem with Joe's plan is that instead of keeping people on the ship until they were like cleared, he told them to just stay home for a couple of weeks and wait for the disease to pass. And that worked. The humans showed that they didn't have the disease. But here's the little secret about the Black Plague, the bubonic plague, the Black Death Plague.

She doesn't really spread from person to person that much. The main way it spreads is through rats and fleas. You remember how I talked about the plague killing half of Europe and they just couldn't figure out why? It was rats and fleas that passed it on to everybody. But nobody really knew this way back then, not even 1899. So they quarantined the people from the boat, but they didn't quarantine the rats, you know? You can't tell rats to quarantine.

And while the humans were being responsible and staying home, the rats were leaving the ship and parting it up and spreading this big B word, okay? This is going to like fuck with everything, isn't it? Yeah. Surprise. It's dark history.

So for a minute there, it seems like everything was going to be fine. There was no plague for a while. But a few months after the ship arrived in San Francisco, a Chinese man is carried by his roommates out of his home in an overcrowded hotel basement in Chinatown straight to a coffin shop. He wasn't dead, obviously.

yet, but he had all the signs of the plague. He had lumps on his neck, boils, his temperature was high, he was vomiting. I mean, everything was just going on and it was not looking good for him. Poor guy. This poor guy died in March of 1900 and health inspectors quickly needed to figure out what was his cause of death, right? Because it was very mysterious and do we have to be worried about this?

So they went to his apartment and discovered that he was sharing his living space with actual rats. Yeah. He slept under some pipes that rats used to walk along. And since he lived underground, his ceiling would leak with a mysterious liquid from the street. So he and all of his roommates all shared a single toilet in the middle of the room. So when the inspector looked closely at this guy's body, they're like, oh my God, he has all the signs of a plague. Okay. And.

And he determined that the plague was officially in San Francisco. It had arrived, bitch. It was here and it was going to take over. So he decided to make a phone call to his boss. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Hello, boss. Yeah, we have to pause for an ad break. Be right back.

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Your cash back really adds up. And we're back. Click. He hung up the phone. I'm just kidding. But he was warning him that this plague was in town.

Well, the health department or what was left of it, you know, because remember there was budget cuts. Yeah. They decided it would be best to quarantine all of Chinatown just to be safe because they didn't know who had it or how it spread, but they knew that they had to get ahead of this as quickly as possible.

So of course, instead of cleaning the area up, they just put up like a giant police barricade around the whole area, which prevented anyone from coming or going in the city. So there were like 20,000 people being forced to stay in Chinatown by police because they didn't want this thing to further spread.

Now remember, many people in San Francisco were already mad at Chinese immigrants because a lot of the people blamed them for the overcrowding and lack of jobs. So when one Chinese person gets the plague, it becomes very easy for everyone to point the finger at them and say like, see, they're the problem. See, see, see, that's what they're doing. See, see.

You know, well, if the health department had more funding and maybe better research, they may have known about some recent research happening in Europe just five years earlier that said the Black Plague was mostly spread by rats and fleas. But of course, they didn't know this at the time. And like email wasn't a thing, you know, it's like the 1900s, so they can't just like shoot out an email. We're so privileged now.

It was said that the first sign something was really wrong was when rich people's servants stopped showing up for work. And you know when rich people are pissed off, that's when you know shit is getting real, okay? And then the next sign was that the switchboard operators were getting a ton of calls from the rich demanding that their Chinese servants be put on the phone. Okay?

Okay, now we don't feel bad for them. It's just an interesting sign of how big an effect this disease was about to have on the city of San Francisco.

People only take it seriously when rich people start complaining. Like, give me a break, Jesus Christ. Anyways, well, now all this commotion gets the attention of some big heavy hitters. Washington, D.C. hears about this and they're a little concerned. Again, the bubonic plague knocked out millions, right? And they really didn't want this to spread because they didn't have an answer as to how to fix this or prevent this from happening again.

So now we get to the next character in our story, the governor of California, a man named Henry Gage. Now he actually put a pause on the San Francisco stuff. And let me tell you about Henry, okay? He had a big old walrus mustache. Have you guys watched the movie Tusk?

That's all I have to say about that. And he wore cowboy boots, okay? And he acted like a hot shot tough guy all of the time. Even back then, it seemed like a lot of people thought he was honestly a little cheesy because he kind of was. But he was all about white ranch owners and just doing things the old way, you know?

If you needed something from him, all you had to do was get him to like you. He didn't care about qualifications or anything. He just wanted to have his ego fed. Now, some said his weird obsession with cowboy types and his own ego got in the way of his ability to actually be a governor.

Surprise, surprise, but okay. Shocking information. But back to the plague. Great. So the United States Secretary of State sends a telegram to him that's basically saying like, hey, we heard you have a centuries old disease in your city. I mean, that's not a good thing.

So they're saying that he needs to come up with a plan ASAP and the governor, Mr. Henry over here, he was like, yeah, we're on it, right? So he comes up with a plan and his plan was to do nothing.

He just wanted to make sure to protect himself so he didn't lose like his position as governor, you know? And with Washington and the press breathing down his neck, he needs to launch an all out offensive attack because this bitch thinks it's about him and not necessarily about the people dying. So at the same time, Dr. Joe, remember Dr. Joe from earlier? Yeah. So he's starting to ask around for some help within the government. San Francisco can't fight this thing alone and they needed money, okay? Fast, fast.

Small business owners didn't like this idea because if word of the plague got out, it meant that these businesses were going to suffer. Does this not sound so familiar? Anyways, for example, like tourism would completely disappear since nobody wants to visit a town riddled with a plague. I mean, of course not. Hello. Health and safety is way more important.

Or like the whole city might be forced into quarantine and nobody would be making or spending money. So the business owners were very anti-Dr. Joe. And they didn't even like when he used the word plague when he wrote about it.

Because back then, all public feuds happened in the newspapers. So one business owner said, following Dr. Joe's plan, would cost San Francisco between $6 and $10 million, which today is, let me check my notes right now, a lot of money. Yeah, it's just a lot of money. And money is always number one before anything else, you know? Like, fuck us, money. Yeah.

So Governor Henry doesn't see the plague as a problem. You know who he sees as a problem?

Dr. fucking Joe. He's the problem here. Okay? So Henry attacks Dr. Joe's credibility. He gets in front of California legislators and rants and rages against Dr. Joe. He's like, these guys are a fucking plague faker. Okay? And he's just doing it to cast, like, fear into everyone's lives. It's not a big deal, you guys. Meh.

money, you know? And at one point he even said that the plague was real, but it was only because Dr. Joe was injecting plague samples into dead bodies to create positive tests. Is this not bizarre? It's just like holding up a mirror. Like this is a Black Mirror episode, right? I know. Isn't this so funny? We've learned nothing. Anyway, so Governor Henry had a great solution for all of this. Of course he did.

First of all, he passed a law that said it was illegal to import any scientific plague samples into the state. He's like, I solved it, everybody. Great job. Really impressing governing, sir. He just passed that law that made it illegal to do something Dr. Joe wasn't even doing.

Great. The other thing the governor did was try to pass a law that said it was illegal to write about the plague at all without permission from the Board of Health. Now, that one didn't pass, but it did plant the seed that the media shouldn't be trusted to talk about the plague. Okay, don't trust the media. They planted that seed and they were watering it. But since it didn't pass, the governor had like, he had to try something else to control what the media was saying about the plague.

Notice he's not even trying to get to the root of the issue and maybe like, I don't know, save some lives. He's literally spending all of his time and energy trying to cover it up and pretend nothing's happening. Everything's fine, everybody calm down. You're not gonna lose your boobs.

Side note, Governor Henry would also bribe all the telegraph operators in San Francisco not to send any messages back to the East Coast and especially not to federal authorities in D.C. with the words plague or victim in them. Bitch, what the fuck is going on? I know. I know.

Dr. Joe would use code words like the word bumpkin when sending any telegrams about the plague outbreak in San Francisco to his boss, who was the U.S. Surgeon General, which is a very funny sentence I never expected to say out loud. Anyway, so my little bumpkin friends, we are going to pause for an ad break.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

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What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash dark history. Welcome back, bumpkin. That's going to be my new word. I'm going to call you all bumpkins. I just learned it's kind of not nice. I didn't know that. I thought it was a compliment. Someone once called me a bumpkin, and I was like, oh, my God, you're so sweet. Go on. What else? Oh, my God. And I just Googled it and learned that it's not a nice thing. So, okay. Well, anyways, back to the story. I'm fine. Everything's fine.

So at this point, San Francisco is getting a lot of attention, right? It's the new epicenter for this plague outbreak. And it attracts a reporter who wasn't sure if it was real or not. People are trying to figure out like what's going on because they're not telling anybody what's going on. They're keeping it very hush-hush. Well, in his initial articles, he seemed a bit, let's say, skeptical of the plague, saying the conditions in Chinatown were the true evil, right?

Like the rats and all that stuff. Because remember, there were like destroyed buildings. There was rats everywhere. So he thought like that was the issue and not necessarily some kind of plague. So you can imagine the governor, Mr. Henry, he loved this because it meant that like he could just keep saying it was all being blown out of proportion. Like look, this guy said...

It's the rats and stuff, like not me. Well, it wasn't long before our guy, Dr. Joe, approached him and was like, hey, look in this microscope, okay? Look at this shit I'm seeing right now. And the reporter did, and what he saw was clear evidence of the plague, and he quickly changed his tune. Now, he was agreeing with Dr. Joe, and this made Henry very upset. Oh, he was real pissed off. So he calls up this reporter and asks him to come to dinner with him.

Now at dinner, apparently he kind of bullied him, the reporter, into changing his mind again. He started planting every seed of doubt. Like where did the tissue Dr. Joe showed you come from? How do you know like – how do you know that he's not a bad doctor? How do you know that it's all real and not fake?

This reporter was pretty easy to convince, I guess. Maybe money was involved, who really knows? But he saw this crazy ass pretend cowboy in front of him just telling him that everything he experienced wasn't even real. And he was like, well, shit, is this real? You start second guessing. Gaslighting. Yeah, gaslighting. I know, I'm amazing. I just now figured that out.

Anywho, so he went home and started writing articles that basically ignored what was happening completely. So he was against the plague. Then he was for the plague. And now he's against the plague again. Just very flip-flop.

And it's just like nobody really knows who to believe anymore. The press, the governor, Dr. Joe, like who are we supposed to be listening to? Because at the end of the day, people are getting sick. People are dying. Worst case scenario, his articles implied the plague wasn't even real. Best case scenario, his articles would say it was real, but it was a problem only for Chinese people.

He would write about how Chinatown was bad, broken down, full of disease, basically saying like, of course these people are getting sick in Chinatown. Have you ever been to that place? It's just...

But at this point, there were already a dozen more confirmed cases of the bubonic plague in San Francisco outside of Chinatown, and they weren't even addressing that. So once again, the governor, Henry, was gaslighting this doctor into changing his tune, and he pretty much set back the entire plague cleanup. But he was successful in conveying one thing.

the governor. He was like, you can't trust the media. You can only trust me. And I'm saying everything is totally great and fine.

Vote for me. While Henry was doing everything he could to make Dr. Joe look like an incompetent fool, Dr. Joe was trying to work around the negative media attention to contain, well, actually, hopefully contain this actual outbreak of this deadly disease because, bitch, it was gonna get everywhere. And then what?

Exactly. So when Dr. Joe would start using state funding to quarantine sick patients or clean up certain areas, Henry would respond by preventing Dr. Joe from using the state's money to do anything else.

When Dr. Joe noticed that more people started dying, he banned railroad travel unless you had a certificate of good health. Henry responded to that by suing him in court where the order was struck down and Dr. Joe almost ended up in jail for a year for forcing illegal quarantine laws on people. Isn't this stupid? What a stupid story.

Ugh. Plus the travel restrictions really roped people the wrong way. And it was easy for the media to make Dr. Joe look like the bad guy. If you can't see me right now, I'm smiling like really big because it's just so funny. It's not funny. This is not funny, but like, it's so stupid. Okay. Even the president of the United States wanted Dr. Joe to chill out and stop making such a big deal out of this. Like no travel all because of a fake plague.

By the way, this is the 1900s we're talking about, not last year, okay? And this infuriating back and forth went on and on and on. It was politics versus science, science versus politics. It was yesterday. It was yesterday. It's tomorrow. It's the next day.

Breathe. Great. Hi. Bodies were piling up. There were people who clearly had the plague whose bodies were being abandoned in the alleyways and in the streets. Although the official death toll was around 25, it's suspected to be much higher because the media, due to political pressure, downplayed the outbreak and under-reported it. As a result of all of this, Dr. Joe was desperate for any kind of support. He was

So he contacted his boss who had connections to Washington, D.C.,

So this boss puts together a commission of doctors who are not affiliated with the federal government to head to San Francisco, set up a lab, and basically see who was really full of shit. Was it Dr. Zhou or was it the governor? Well, through working with a Chinese interpreter, this commission reports back that Dr. Zhou was indeed telling the goddamn truth. The bubonic plague is in San Francisco and it's about to get way worse if nothing is done.

ASAP. Okay, hi, are we gonna do something now? Well, I'm sure none of us are surprised to hear this that Governor Henry, yeah, he was not a happy camper. Okay, the governor started lashing out saying that this report is going to ruin California. The mythical land of wealth and freedom is going to disappear if this report sees the light of day. So,

Governor Henry does two things. One, he orders a full media blackout. No one can discuss this plague fake, which is what Henry started calling it to the press. Plague fake, which does not like roll off the tongue easily. Plague fake? Why not fake plague? But okay, whatever. And two, he gets the ball rolling on getting Dr. Joe kicked out of San Francisco. Ain't that some shit, Joan?

So listen, even though the governor tried his best to bury the report, someone sent it to Dr. Joe's boss back in Washington, D.C. It turns out Dr. Joe's boss also didn't want the report to get to the press. The reason is because he was the surgeon general, meaning he was the top doctor in the whole entire country. Like if there was a president of doctors, it was this guy.

Okay? And he did not want to look stupid. So he told everybody later that he just wanted to avoid a national panic and that, like, he was looking out for the greater good. But what the fuck? You know? This place sucks. Come on.

So the Surgeon General made a deal with the city of San Francisco. There would be full funding to clean up this plague business as fast and as quietly as possible, okay? And there would be free treatment for anybody who got sick. In return, everybody shuts the hell up, okay? Shut your damn dirty ass mouth and pretend none of this happened, okay? Just a bad dream. Just a fever dream. Just an LOL. But there was one problem, okay?

Dr. Joe would never go along with this whole shutting the hell up thing, okay? And the Surgeon General, he knew that shit. He was like, oh, fuck, what are we gonna do about this guy? We gotta get rid of him. Well, very quickly and very quietly, the Surgeon General replaced Dr. Joe with a special plague doctor. And to make it worse, Dr. Joe didn't even find out he was being replaced until he met his replacement.

Side note, Dr. Joe really loved his time in San Francisco because he called it the jewel of the West Coast. And so when he discovered that he was actually being transferred to fucking Detroit, he was like, what the fuck, bro? Not cool. Like, I love this place. How dare you? So he's out.

The governor is happy, you know, Dr. Joe is out of the picture and the Surgeon General has his back. But despite all of their efforts to ignore a plague, the commission's special report leaks to the press anyway. Good. And the nation went absolutely wild, as they fucking should. News of the plague spread like a plague. Ugh.

States across the country prepared quarantine zones, and it actually became good business to advertise that your restaurant or store has no food from California. The reason they were keeping the plague quiet in the first place was because California's economy would crash, okay? And again, money over everything, over lives, safety, all of that, right? But it happened anyways, okay? So...

You killed a bunch of people and your economy crashed. So I don't know. And guess what? The plague is still alive and well and spreading in the damn city. Okay? This is the worst possible outcome for the damn cowboy governor guy. And how the people of Europe felt in the 1300s is probably how Americans felt at this point. Was this going to kill half of our country? No.

You know, I don't want to. Like no one really knew. It was just a really dark time and people were scared and San Francisco didn't have any options left.

For a while, a few other people held the position Dr. Joe used to have, but nobody seemed to be able to figure out where the heck this plague business was coming from. But there would be one man who would come in from out of the shadows to save San Francisco and maybe even the world. Someone from out of the blue. And his name was Blue. Rupert Blue. Ad break.

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Well, Dr. Joe is officially out of the picture and now we have this man named Rupert Blue who is ready to jump into action. And this is actually the easiest part of the story because he kind of like kills it. Oh wait, slays it. I don't want to say kills it because like a lot of people are dying. So I just feel like that's not the right word, but he's like working it. He's working that pussy out, girl. Oh.

Just kidding. Okay, look, but it helped that he had like the full support of the government and actual funding, but the way this total master just went into like handling this crisis was absolutely brilliant and we applaud Mr. Blue. So who is this mysterious Rupert Blue? Well, he was born on May 30th, 1868 and was a former soldier who had become an assistant doctor to the Surgeon General before he was 25 years old.

But according to his colleagues, he wasn't anything special, okay? He came in as the assistant to Dr. Joe's replacement, but he didn't act like an assistant. He was honestly running the show from day one.

Everyone viewed Chinatown as the center of the problem. Like that was where the disease was starting. But there was no basis for this. It was just common knowledge, even though the disease was like all over the freaking city. The way the government had been dealing with the Chinese population so far, like I said, police quarantines, there was raids, and even having the Secret Service trail people to see if they could find sick people that way.

Well, Rupert had this bright idea. He's like, hey, why don't I just go like talk to the people in Chinatown? Yeah, I guess nobody had thought of that yet. So he's like, I'm gonna go step one. I'm gonna go see what's going on.

So in his first couple weeks on the job, he spent a lot of time in Chinatown district talking to people and just making different connections. Now this guy took a real investigative approach to this whole thing. Boots on the ground. He's like almost like Sherlock Holmes seeing patterns, making connections where others just sat back and I don't know what the fuck they did. They did nothing.

Because of how impressed everyone was with Rupert being able to get people to open up to him, Rupert got promoted to Dr. Joe's old job. With the help of an interpreter, he went around Chinatown meeting with residents. And when he would go to their houses for a chat, one of the things he would ask was to get a tour of the house to see the conditions that these people were living in.

In his first week on the job, he was shown cellars that smelled and looked like actual death, like not exaggerating. And when Rupert went in closer, he saw that the reason the cellars were this way was because the sewage was overflowing. And what was in the disgusting sewage water? Hundreds of dead rats.

Light bulb. Hi. It was at this time that Rupert started noticing that everywhere he went in Chinatown, he saw rats. There would be piles of rotting meat all over the streets, swarming with rats. People's bedrooms infested with rats. Even the rats were infested with rats.

rats just rats all rats take a shot every time I say rats Rupert had seen enough and was ready to take action first thing he did was set up an office right in Chinatown yeah he was just not afraid of shit he was taking it like right on

He set up a special service where if you suspected someone of having the plague, a special horse-drawn cart would immediately come out and pick up the person and then take him to his lab. Cases started to decrease with this extra effort on Rupert's part, but they still weren't stopping completely. He just couldn't figure out what exactly was causing the spread. Well, he noticed a German woman who lived near Chinatown got the plague and it gave Rupert an idea.

The rats. She lived just close enough that a rat could easily go from Chinatown to her home, and there were just so many freaking rats, there had to be some kind of connection. Unfortunately, a lot of other doctors, including the Surgeon General, disagreed. Of course they did. And they didn't think rats had anything to do with it. They thought it was more about filth and the lack of plumbing and the lifestyle habits of the people.

Rupert probably didn't know about this relatively recent discovery of the link between rats, fleas, and plague transmission. Remember, it's the early 1900s. I mean, it was just a lot of brand new information. And that shit was discovered in France and like they figured it all out, you know. So he was just putting two and two together and saw rats everywhere and guessed like, hey, I'm going to make like an observation here, an educated guess, right?

Rats. And he went with it. Even though he was on his own, he would do what he could to control the rat population. He would promote a citywide rat cleanup, including soaking Chinatown cellars with rat poison and laying asphalt on the streets, tearing down shacks and makeshift housing. And of course, using rat traps or trapping the rats. Lots of trapping.

He even hired rat trappers and would pay citizens for every rat that someone could catch and could deliver to his lab, alive or dead, which I'm sure would be like, you'd be all over that. I'd be like, fuck yeah, make money catching rats? Like, yeah. I don't know, whatever. There were advertisements in the newspaper with tips on how to catch rats, and this encouraged even all the local kids to start catching them.

There's not really any other way to say this, but no rat was safe from Rupert Blue. When he got the rats, he would do an autopsy on them and find out if they had the plague or not. And then he would incinerate them afterwards just to, like, you know, protect his ass. It was a way to make sure the plague was destroyed and not going to be spread.

Apparently, Blue and his team killed thousands of rats and rat traps were found all over the city, especially in Chinatown. And not only was it good for cleaning up, but it wasn't a bad way to make a little money on the side. And you know what's crazy? You know what the craziest part of all this is? It actually worked. Wow. The rat cleanup and the rebuilding of Chinatown made it hard for the rats to keep spreading the bubonic plague. And by 1905, guess what, bitch?

She was out of there. The bubonic plague was a buh-bye. Boo-boo. Bye. Bubonic plague? Goodbye forever. R.I.P. Gone. You won't be missed. Keep in touch, but don't really.

Well, remember, live, laugh, love, all of that, you know? So over the years, the plague would pop up here and there. And when it happened, they would call up the rat king, Rupert Blue. Apparently, Rupert was also quite popular with the ladies after all of this too. And he had the reputation as the guy who saved San Francisco from the plague or the guy who killed all the rats. And women just love that shit. You're like, oh my God, it was you? Ah, yeah.

And then San Francisco had about six months of peace. I think God was a little upset or something because then the earthquake came in 1906 and just ruined the whole city. So it really didn't last long. But that's like a different story for a different day. What a roller coaster, wasn't it? That's the bubonic place. Wasn't that fun? Didn't we learn a lot? Now, if you didn't catch on, that was all very similar to what we may have experienced in the last year or so. For

For instance, the pandemic started in China and sparked a lot of anti-Asian racism. And not just against the Chinese, it was just against all Asian cultures. Get this. And if you connect the pieces of this weird ass mystery, the outbreak started, the bubonic plague, in March of 1900. COVID shut down everything in March 2020.

- Wild! Is this not so bizarre? Shut up. Trump and Governor Henry, same guy, different era. Media focusing on like downplaying everything, putting money first, discrediting these doctors, politics versus science, science versus America. I mean, wow. Isn't that wild? Now, what did we learn here today, friends? My little bumpkins? What about you, Joan? What do you gotta say?

Yeah, she said we're dumb as shit. I know. I know. History sure does repeat itself. And sometimes when you don't learn from the past, it happens again and again and again until you idiots learn from the past. I just solved America. Just kidding. Okay, but like, don't take this personally. Don't turn this into a political debate. This is all a story from history.

Yeah, this literally happened and it's happening again now. And I think if we remove ourselves from our tiny little brains and we look at the bigger picture here, I think it's so simple. You know, like this isn't a conspiracy. It's an illness and we should treat it like that. And we should put lives at number one and not money. That's just what I think though. Joan thinks we're all a bunch of fucking morons. But what does she know? Yeah.

She's just a bird. So you're probably wondering, well, what happened to the bubonic plague? Like, where'd she go? Well, let me tell you, she's not gone forever, okay? Like, she's kind of like around. She could make an appearance if she wanted to, but we're praying that she doesn't. And if she does make an appearance, let's hope that maybe we actually like respond to it in the right way. Oh, fuck. I don't want to put that into the universe. She's not coming back, but she might.

Never say never. Yay. So the San Francisco play continues to live on even now in the 21st century. So to be honest, I wanted to tell this story because I learned about it like a couple months ago and I was like, oh my God, this is so hilarious in a not funny way. I was like, this is literally us. How many years later? I can't do math, but how many years later? 120?

we sure did fuck it up and then I dug deeper and I was like dude this is just so bizarre it's like black mirror shit let me um let me grab my book okay well wasn't this a fun chapter oh wasn't it fun I know we all have pandemic fatigue okay and I don't mean to make you relive COVID and I know we're all so sick about talking about COVID and blah it's just exhausting right like

Jesus. But maybe, maybe we'll remember things from our past. Maybe there's some lessons to be learned. Maybe this won't happen again. One could only hope and pray. I don't know, y'all. I want to have faith in us, but I don't know.

Anywho, thank you guys so much for hanging out with me today. Sorry to like bring down the mood with more plague, COVID nonsense, you know. But wasn't it fun? You know? Yeah? Let me know what you think down below. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions and get the whole story. Be a little curious, Kat.

Find out what's happened in history that we also seem to be repeating. You might be surprised. Now, I'd love to hear your guys' reactions to this story, so make sure to use the hashtag DarkHistory over on social media so I can follow along and...

See you talking shit because I'm sure you're gonna. Or maybe join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs. And also don't forget to check out Murder, Mystery, and Makeup which also airs on Mondays. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices. Please, please make good choices. And I'll be talking to you next week.

Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by me, Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs, Junya McNeely from 3Arts, Ed Simpson, and Claire Turner from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, and Spencer Strassmore. Research provided by Ramona Kivett.

Writers, Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. And my dog. I'm gonna shout him out, Saint, because he's just cute. A big thank you to our historical consultant, Robert Perrins. Couldn't have done it without you, Robert. Ayyy. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. Say bye, Joan. Oh my god, she's such a bitch. Anyways, bye!

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