at that point, one of the french guests replied "Oh, nice one. And you came up with that joke all by yourself, or you needed the prussians also for it?"
To be fair, the bubonic plague never went away and there is a bubonic plague scare every year. Given that the bubonic plague is arguably the deadliest disease the world has ever seen, every scientist that studies disease is constantly looking for the tiniest hint of the bubonic plague. Not that I'm complaining. Caution is good. Just because I'm paranoid does not mean everyone and everything isn't out to get me.
I wouldn't say there's a scare every year, but it is endemic among a lot of the animals in Northern AZ, i.e. squirrels, etc. But one of the reasons it isn't a big deal right now is that it is easily dealt with by a dose of antibiotics. It's nowhere near as big a threat as smallpox or even the flu.