As human civilizations flourished so did the diseases. Large numbers of people living in close proximity to each other and to animals often with poor sanitation and nutrition, provided breeding grounds for disease. When trading routes got established, the novel diseases got spread worldwide creating global pandemics. The Coronavirus or COVID-19 is not that much different from them. It has shook the most stable economies and governments of the present time. But before Coronavirus outbreak, there were many deadly pandemics that caused terror and deaths around the globe. So here are some past pandemics that occured before coronavirus outbreak.

Plague of Justinian (541-542)

Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for the plague

A single bacterium Yersinia pestis caused three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history. Plague was the name of the infection.. One is The Plague of Justinian. It arrived in Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire in 541 CE. It was carried over from Egypt which was a recently conquered land paying tribute to Emperor Justinian in grain. Plague-ridden fleas were present on the rats taking a bite out of the grains.

The plague destroyed Constantinople and spread like wildfire across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia. It killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people. It wiped out almost half of world’s population. The people with most immunity survived. The Plague of Justinian is known to be one of the deadliest pandemics of history as the death toll is still not entirely accurate even at 50M.

The Black Death(1347-1351): Invention of Quarantine

The Black Death Plague Virus

The Black Death was a bubonic plague that haunted the whole Europe in the mid 1300s. It hit Europe in 1347. As it’s a bubonic plague it is believed to be spread from fleas and plague infected animals. It may also result from exposure to the body fluids from a dead plague-infected animal. In the this form of plague, the bacteria enter through the skin through a flea bite and travel via the lymphatic vessels to a lymph node, causing it to swell.

Spread of Plague in mid 1300s

The disease was so dangerous and mind boggling to understand. So some forward thinking officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa decided to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until they could prove they weren’t sick. At first, sailors were held on their ships for 30 days, which became known in Venetian law as a trentino. As time went on, the Venetians increased the forced isolation to 40 days or a quarantino, the origin of the word quarantine and the start of its practice in the Western world.

The Black Death plague took around 200M lives at the time in just four years.

A plague doctor wearing a plague mask

The Great Plague of London(1665)

The Great plague of London

From 1351-1665, After the black Death, plague never really left london. It resurfaced almost every 20 years with 40 outbreaks in 300 years killing 20 percent of people in the British Capital. By the early 1500s, England imposed the first laws to separate and isolate the sick. A bale of hay strung to a pole outside of homes struck by plague. If you had infected family members, you had to carry a white pole when you went out in public. Cats and dogs were believed to carry the disease, so there was a massacre of hundreds of thousands of animals.

Scenes of the Great plague of London

It was the last and one of the deadliest outbreaks in centuries killing over 100,000 people in London. All public entertainment was banned. Victims were forcibly shut into their homes to prevent the spread of the disease. Red crosses were painted on their doors along with a plea for forgiveness: “Lord have mercy upon us.”

Smallpox(1520 – onwards): European Disease that Haunted the New World

Smallpox was endemic to Europe, Asia and Arabia for centuries, a persistent menace that killed three out of ten people it infected and left the rest with pockmarked scars. But death rate in the Old World was not as high. It arrived in the New World through European travelers in the 15th century. The indigenous peoples of modern-day Mexico and the United States had zero natural immunity to smallpox and the virus cut them down by the tens of millions. Mexico went from 11 million people pre-conquest to one million.

The Smallpox Virus

Centuries later, smallpox became the first epidemic to be treated by a vaccine. In the late 18th-century, a British doctor named Edward Jenner discovered that milkmaids infected with a milder virus called cowpox seemed immune to smallpox. Jenner famously inoculated his gardener’s 9-year-old son with cowpox and then exposed him to the smallpox virus with no ill effect. Smallpox almost caused 50 million deaths.

“The annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice,”wrote Jenner in 1801.

And he was right. It took almost two more centuries, but in 1980 the World Health Organization announced that smallpox had been completely eradicated from the face of the Earth.

Cholera Pandemics (1817-1923)

The Cholera

In the early- to mid-19th century, cholera tore through England, killing tens of thousands. The theory at the time was that it spread through a foul air. But a British doctor named John Snow suspected that the mysterious disease which killed its victims within days of the first symptoms. It lurked in London’s drinking water. The culprit virus here was V. cholerae bacteria.

Bad sanitary conditions are a major cause of cholera

Snow investigated the morgues where most deaths occured and created a geographic chart over a 10-day period. He found a cluster of 500 fatal infections surrounding the Broad Street pump, a popular city well for drinking water.With many efforts he convinced the officials to remove the pump from the well making it unusable and the pandemic somehow vanished overnight. his effort led to a global effort of improving urban sanitary conditions around the globe. Cholera killed over 1 million people.

Spanish Flu(1918-1919): H1N1

The outbreak began in 1918, during the final months of World War I. Historians now believe that the conflict may have been partly responsible for spreading the virus. On the Western Front, soldiers living in cramped, dirty and damp conditions became ill. This was a direct result of weakened immune systems from malnourishment. Within around three days of becoming ill, many soldiers would start to feel better, but not all would make it. Almost 40-50 million people died because of it.Spanish Flu affected over 500 million people around the globe. 25 million died in the first week.

Over 500 million people were affected

Despite the name Spanish Flu, the disease likely did not start in Spain. The pandemic was first identified in Spain. Historians believe this was likely a result of wartime censorship. Spain was a neutral nation during the war and did not enforce strict censorship of its press, which could therefore freely publish early accounts of the illness. As a result, people falsely believed the illness was specific to Spain, and the name Spanish Flu stuck.

Coronavirus Outbreak: Situation Right Now

The Coronavirus structure

Since the coronavirus outbreak in december of 2019 in Wuhan China, there have been a total of 3,018,196 cases worldwide. There have been 208,073 deaths and 888,725 have recovered. The spread of the virus is in initial to middle stages in many countries and has peaked in many as well like China, Italy and Spain. The USA alone has 989,838 cases and 55,497 deaths. Researches for vaccines is undergoing still as the virus is quite new and mysterious.

What’s Different than the Past?

There are quite a few points that do indicate that humans are going to tackle the coronavirus outbreak better than they have in the past.

Use of tech in Medical Field

More educated people

Much better media coverage and awareness regarding coronavirus outbreak

Advancements in medicine

Use of technology like AI and other stuff

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