talking about Pandemics...
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Started by GunterK - Jan. 15, 2022, 1:10 p.m.

I noticed, when the subject of “pandemics of the past” comes up, most people,  here in the US, think of the Spanish Flu.

Where I grew up, in a small town in Germany, we would immediately think of the Bubonic Plague of the 1600s.  (there are several other Bubonic Plague outbreaks in history, but the one of the 1600s is intricately linked to our area… but’s that’s another story)

The links below give you interesting details about these pandemics, as well as others.

Bubonic Plague

The bubonic plague is not caused by a virus… it is caused by bacteria. It has made appearances, at various times, in various regions, throughout the last 2 millenniums.

Historical records show a major outbreak in the Roman/Byzantine Empire, during the 6th century.

The “Big One”, however, came in the 1300s. This one started in what is now China. From there, the Mongols carried it West… to the Black Sea and the Middle East. It is said, that the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) lost 90% of its population to the plague [this may be an exaggeration]. From there, it slowly spread to Europe. When it finally faded away, 50% of the population of Europe was dead.

Another strain of the disease occurred in Europe in the 1600s. When this outbreak faded away, it had killed approximately 35% of the population of Europe.

Spanish Flu

At the end of WW1, the Spanish Flu appeared in France and quickly spread around the globe, before it faded away, 2 years later.

Various estimates give us a body count of 25-100 million worldwide. With a world population of 1.9 billion at that time, the fatality rate calculates as 1.3% to 5.2%

Covid

And now, we live in the Covid world.  At the end of 2021, At the end of 2021, Covid19 has killed 824,000 people in the US. With a population of 333 million, this comes to 0.25% of our population

Worldwide, Covid19 has killed 5.44 million people. With a world population of 7.9 billion, the fatality rate of Covid19 is 0.07%

It is noteworthy that the US, as well as a few other countries, have a higher Covid fatality rate than the rest of the world.Why?

https://www.history.com/news/black-death-timeline

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/long-view-historys-seven-deadliest-plagues

With this post I was not trying to belittle our current pandemic. None of us have ever experienced anything like this before. I was only trying to put it into historical context.  No matter how high the numbers were in the ancient past, losing 800k+ people in the US is horrible.

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