Entire civilizations have been wiped out by some of the worst epidemics and Pandemics in the history of the world. Thanks to the advancement in epidemiology, we don't face the same dire consequences as our ancestors did.
From prehistoric to modern times, there have been 21 of the worst epidemics and Pandemics.
The Spanish Flu was the worst epidemic in history.
An epidemic wiped out a village in China. There were bodies in the house that was burned down. The skeletons of people of all ages were found in the house.
One of the best-preserved prehistoric sites in northeastern China is now known as "Hamin Mangha". The site was not inhabited again after the epidemic because there was no time for burials.
There was a prehistoric mass burial in northeastern China that was discovered before the discovery of Hamin Mangha. The discoveries show that an epidemic ravaged the region.
The people of Athens were ravaged by an epidemic after the war between Athens and Sparta began. There are differing estimates of the death toll. People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heat in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts of the body, such as the throat or tongue.
A number of diseases have been put forward as possible causes of the epidemic, including a number of diseases that have not yet been proven to be true. The epidemic is thought to have been worsened by overcrowding during the war. Sparta's army was stronger and forced the Athenians to take refuge in the "long walls" of their city. Athens was forced to capitulate to Sparta in the 40s B.C. despite the epidemic.
The soldiers came back to the Empire with more than just victory. According to April Pudsey, a senior lecturer in Roman History at Manchester Metropolitan University, the Antonine Plague may have killed over five million people in the Roman Empire.
There are medical myths and facts.
The epidemic is thought to have been brought into the Roman Empire by soldiers returning from war. The Pax Romana ended in A.D. 180 due to the epidemic. The Roman Empire experienced more civil wars and invasions as a result of A.D. 180. After the plague happened, Christianity became more popular.
The Plague of Cyprian is thought to have killed 5,000 people a day in Rome. Archaeologists in Luxor discovered a mass burial site of plague victims. They were covered with a thick layer of lime. The remains of plague victims were burned in a giant bonfire and three kilns used to make lime were discovered.
The experts don't know what caused the epidemic. In a work called "De mortalitate," Cyprian wrote about how a fire in the marrow could cause wounds in the fauces.
The bubonic plague destroyed the Byzantine Empire. After the plague recurred, it happened again. Up to 10% of the world's population may have died.
The plague is named after an emperor. The Byzantine Empire was able to control territory from the Middle East to Western Europe under his rule. Hagia Sophia is a great cathedral that was built in Constantinople, the empire's capital. He got sick with the plague. His empire lost territory after the plague hit.
The Black Death left a trail of destruction in its wake. Estimates show that it wiped out half of Europe's population. The plague was caused by a strain of the bacterium that is extinct today and was spread by fleas on rodents. Mass graves held the bodies of victims.
Europe's history was altered by the plague. The end of Europe's system of serfdom was brought about by the fact that labor was harder to find. Studies show that surviving workers had better access to food. Cheap labor may have contributed to technological innovation.
The epidemic that killed 15 million people in Mexico and Central America was caused by an infectious disease. The disease was devastating among a population that was already weakened by the extreme dry spell. The Aztec word for "pest" is "Coco Liztli".
A study that looked at the skeletons of victims found that they had been exposed to a type ofSalmonella called S. paratyphi C. It's still a major health threat because of enteric fever.
The American Plagues were a group of diseases from Europe. The collapse of the Inka and Aztec civilization was caused by these illnesses. Estimates show that the majority of the indigenous population in the Western Hemisphere was killed off.
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitln was conquered in 1519. Both empires were taken over by the Spanish. The Aztec and Incan armies were ravaged by disease and were not able to fight the Spanish.
When people from Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands began colonizing the Western Hemisphere, they were aided by the fact that disease had reduced the size of any indigenous groups that opposed them.
King Charles II led a mass exodus from London due to the Black Death. During the hot summer months, the plague spread quickly. The main cause of transmission was fleas.
About 100,000 people died from the plague by the time it ended. This wasn't the end of the city's misery. The Great Fire of London burned down a large portion of the city.
According to historical records, the Great Plague of Marseille began when a ship called "Grand-Saint-Antoine" docked in Marseille. Plague may have gotten into the city through fleas on plague-infecting rodents.
Over the next three years, as many as 100,000 people may have died in the area due to the plague. Up to 30% of the population may have died.
The citizens of Moscow were afraid of the plague and became violent. The riots spread through the city and ended with the murder of the archbishop.
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great, was so desperate to contain the plague that she ordered all factories to move from Moscow. As many as 100,000 people could have died from the plague. Catherine had trouble restoring order after the plague ended. The insurrection led by Yemelyan Pugachev resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.
At the time, officials wrongly believed that slaves were immune. People of African descent were called to nurse the sick.
During the particularly hot and humid summer of Philadelphia, there was a population boom due to the disease. After the mosquitoes died out, the epidemic ended. There were more than 5,000 deaths by that time.
New transport links made it easier for the flu to spread. The disease killed one million people in just a few months. The epidemic reached peak mortality in just five weeks.
There were early cases in Russia. Despite the fact that air travel didn't exist yet, the virus quickly spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world before it could be stopped.
Children are the most affected by the disease and it can leave survivors with permanent disabilities.
The Salk vaccine was developed to fight the disease. Cases in the US declined as the vaccine became widely available. In 1979 there was the last case of the disease in the US. Although it is not completely eradicated, the disease has been reduced by worldwide vaccination efforts.
500 million people from the south to the north were affected by Spanish Flu. Some indigenous communities were pushed to the verge of extinction, with 20% of those dying. The cramped conditions of soldiers and poor nutrition during World War I made the flu more lethal.
The Spanish Flu is probably not the disease that started in Spain. During the war, Spain did not enforce strict censorship of its press, which allowed early accounts of the illness to be published. The name Spanish Flu stuck because people wrongly thought it was specific to Spain.
The Asian Flu Pandemic was a show for the world. More than one million people died from the disease in China. The strain of flu that caused the outbreak was a mix of two different types of flu.
The disease was reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and the coastal cities of the United States in the summer of 1957. There were more than one million deaths worldwide and 116,000 deaths in the US.
35 million people have died from AIDS since it was first discovered. Chimpanzees in West Africa in the 1920s may have been the source of HIV, which is the cause of AIDS. AIDS was a global epidemic by the late 20th century. The majority of the 40 million people living with HIV are in Africa.
The disease had no known cure for decades, but medication developed in the 1990s now allows people with the disease to live a normal life. Two people have been cured of HIV.
A new strain of H1N1, which originated in Mexico in the spring of 2009, was the cause of the swine flu epidemic. According to the CDC, the virus killed between 150,700 and 571,400 people in one year.
Children and young adults were the group most affected by the flu in 2009, according to the CDC. The highest percentage of deaths in people over the age of 65 are caused by strains of flu.
Older people were unaffected by the swine flu because they had built up immunity to the group of Viruses that H1N1 belonged to. The H1N1 vaccine is included in the yearly flu vaccine.
How is the COVID-19 Pandemic different to the last one?
In December of last year, the first case of the disease was reported in West Africa. The majority of the cases and deaths happened in those three countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a decrease in the number of cases in Nigeria.
Efforts to find a vaccine for the disease are still going on. The first cases of the disease were in Sudan and the Democratic Republic ofCongo in 1976, and it is possible that the disease came from bats.
The impact of the epidemic in South America and Central America will not be known for a long time. Scientists are racing against the clock to control the virus. Humans can be sexually transmitted if they are bitten by a mosquito that is carrying the Aedes genera.
Babies who are still in the womb and cause birth defects are at increased risk of contracting the mosquito-borne disease. South America, Central America and parts of the southern United States are prime areas for the virus to flourish because of the types of mosquitoes that carry it.
The world's deadliest viral outbreak in more than a century is thought to be caused by the novel coronaviruses. The pathogen caused 1.6 million deaths and 75 million infections after it was first detected. COVID-19 killed more people in the US than the Spanish flu did during the 1918 flu epidemic.
The 1918 Pandemic claimed more than 50 million lives worldwide and the death toll was high due to the lack of antibiotics and vaccines at the time. By comparison, today's global population is nearly 8 billion, and as of mid-August 2022, about 6.4 million people had died of COVID-19, although the reported number is likely lower than the true total.
The updated global case count and number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 can be found on the WHO dashboard.
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