Yahoo! News - Texas Tech Professor Arrested in Plague Scare
The World Health Organization (news - web sites) reports 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague globally every year. In the United States, plague is reported in between 10 and 15 people every year, killing a small percentage.

This is a classic example of the bad use of numbers. If the plague kills one person out of 15, that is nearly 7%. That doesn't strike me as a small percentage.