According to wiki, Reed died of scrub typhus in 1920 at age 32 in Moscow. Trotsky by that time was minister of war and had his armored train as the mobile HQ of the Red Army. There is a great chapter in My Life, called, The Train. It was outfitted with telegraph and live wire to Moscow. Really a good read. Lenin was in charge and Stalin was making his moves in the background.
I looked up this strain of typhus. It is carried by a mite found in scrub brush country on small mammals, rodens, etc.The areas range from Japan to Siberia and undeveloped lands west and south into Thailand..