Covid-19, A.K.A. “the Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus,” being officially declared a world wide pandemic led to a panicked (real or manufactured) reaction that amounted to willful destruction of economies and (not coincidentally) fundamental rights. Whether this corona-virus ultimately lives up to its hype – and boy oh boy has the hype been traveling in hyper-drive for a minute now – or not, it might be worth while to look back on some of the most devastating pandemics throughout history.
Beginning with a couple of pandemics all the way back in antiquity, it should probably be pointed out that the number of reported deaths for plauges that happened thousands of years ago is at best educated guesses. Implicit in this warning is the notion that the high numbers reported should be take with a grain of salt, but given the recent claims of coronavirus death rate being “padded” by hospitals, maybe a lot should be taken with a grain of salt. With that said, beginning with ancient plagues, here now the list:
10 – The Plague at Athens – Epidemic the prototype to Pandemic
During the second year of the Peloponnesian War in 430 BC a plague hit Athens that finally felled its leader, the much vaunted Pericles and ultimately shook the political, religious and economic foundations of that nation/state. An estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people died from this as of yet identified pathogen, the Plague of Athens became the first recorded epidemic in history. Thucydides, who not only chronicled the disease but contracted, suffered through it and lived to tell the tale, described in graphic detail the symptoms of this plague.
“People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or the tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.”
As to the long cultivated social order of Athens, Thucydides wrote; “…for as the disaster passed all bounds, men, not knowing what was to become of them, became utterly careless of everything, whether sacred or profane.” The Plague of Athens contributed greatly to Athen’s ultimate loss to the Spartans and the end of the empire of Greece.
9 – The Antonine Plauge (also known as the Plague of Galen)
Brought to the Roman Empire by soldiers returning from military campaigns in the Near East, an unknown plague (some modern scholars suggest smallpox or measles) wreaked havoc throughut the empire between 165 to 180 AD. While admid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus Covid-19, the New York Times campaigned mightily to have the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus be renamed after Donald J. Trump, historians have come to know this ancient virus (at least those historians not calling it the “Plauge of Galen”) as the Antonine Plauge, named after Rome’s first co-emporors; brothers Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurellius Antonius.
At the height of this pandemic (a later outbreak of the same disease) more than 2,000 people were dying each day (some estimates as high as 5,000 per day) and the mortality rate for this plague is estimated at 25%. It likely goes without saying that Marcus Aurellius’ philosophy and outlook chronicled in Meditations was profoundly influence by his experience with the disease: “Hath not yet experience taught thee to fly from the plague? For a far greater plague is the corruption of the mind, than any certain change and distemper of the common air can be.”
Marcus Aurellius had already seen his brother die and likely from the plague that ravaged Rome, but there was something more troubling to he than this plague. He saw another kind of plague:
“Hath not yet experience taught thee to fly from the plague? For a far greater plague is the corruption of the mind, than any certain change and distemper of the common air can be.” As data and facts continue to unfold amid news of big tech censorship of uncomfortable facts, his warning seems tragically prescient. Upon his deathbed, likely a victim of the plague himself, he is reputed to have uttered; “Weep not for me, think rather of the pestilence and the deaths of so many others.”
8 – The Plague of Justinian
Long before there was Istanbul there was Constantinople, the center of the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire and, as history would have it, ground zero for the first ever record of the bubonic plague that would ravage Europe for centuries to come. The Byzantine Empire, under the rule of Justinan I in the 6th century AD, and more specifically not Istanbul but rather Constantinople was hit hard by a deadly plague carried by rat borne fleas that traveled so easily on the ships that sailed in and out of the Byzantine ports. Another plague with estimates of up to 5,000 dead per day and of a near 40% mortality rate across the Meditaranian sea board.
More recent analysis, however, suggest that maybe these numbers have been exaggerated: “The growing inclusion of natural scientific data in historical analysis is a positive development, but since historians are less knowledgeable about how to read and apply these tools, they sometimes overestimate historical effects. Scientists, who are rarely aware of historial nuances, further exacerbate this simplification and frequently argue for large scale social and political changes. These simple causal models proliferate in studies that examine pre-modern environments.” Regardless, it seems most historicans agree this plague marked the end of antiquity.
7 – The Black Death
With a death toll number that runs ansywhere from 75 to 200 million people dead, the global pandemic that spread across much of the world and culminated in Europe between 1347 and 1351 has become known as the Black Death. While there doesn’t seem to be much certainty of where this plague began, best guess it began in Asia sometime after the Mongol conquest of China and then spread throughout Europe. Contemporary medicine of the dark ages tended to buy into the Miasma theory of disease. That epidemics began from a “bad air” emenating around the populace.
This miasmatic theory flattered the prevailing religious beliefs that the disease itself was a plague sent by God. It would be centuries later that the germ theory of disease would replace the miasmatic theory and a big factor playing into the spread of the medieval plague was lack of hygene. Filth was everwhere in public places. On people, near and around them. Although personal hygene guidelines were not a part of medieval mitigation efforts, the origin of the word “quarantine” appears to have come from the middle ages during the time of the black death.
In 1377 the Great Council of Ragusa (Dubrovnik, Croatia), using a less extreme model of Italy’s method of removing the sick from the healthy and placing them in isolation outside of the town. They passed legislation they called “trentino,” which called for a 30 day isolation period. Later the statute was revised to make it 40 days and this is where the word “quarantine” (rooted in the Latin word quaranta meaning forty) was born.
6 – 1492: The Columbian Exchange
While Europe and Asia struggled with many comunicable diseases dating back to antiquity and even further back, apparently the native people who inhabited “the New World” had never sufered from them and only suffered from a limited number of diseases. That all changed dramatically when European explorers and settlers landed in the Americas. Lacking the natural immunities that European’s had regarding diseases like smallpox and measels, the natives of the America’s were suddenly inuduated with devastating diseases. Alfred Crosby coined the phrase “virgin soil epidemic” to address this phenomenon.
Christopher Columbus’ landing on the shores of San Salvador was met by the inhabitants, the Taino. Their population at that time (October 12, 1492) was estimated to be anywhere from 60,000 to more than 8 million people. The Taino welcomed their new vistors from the Old World and with it welcomed diseases they had never seen. Just fifty years later the population of the Taino was reduced to less than 500 people. When Spanish forces landed on Vera Cruz, Mexico in April of 1520, they brought with them an African slave infected with smallpox. By the end of the year smallpox had killed anywhere from an estimated 50,000 to 300,000 indigenous people.
Across the America’s, old diseases from the old word wreaked havoc on the indigenous people of the new world. From the reduction of 75% of the Timucua in Florida to the decimation of the Huron natives of the Great Lakes for more than 400 years those born on virgin soil saw heavy losses in their populations due to old world disease. Not unironically, the Columbian exchange means things went both ways and there is some speculation that syphilis originated in the America’s. So, there’s that.
5 – The Worst of the 7 Cholera Pandemics.
We would be hard pressed to point any one of the 7 cholera pandemics between 1817 and 1975 and declare one of them the “best” of the pandemics, but it’s not so hard to point to what seems to have been the worst of them. Beginning in 1846 the third cholera pandemic led to more than a million deaths in Russia, and in Mecca over 15,000 people died from the disease. The oubreak reached England by 1848 killing more than 52,000 people. 200,000 victims in Mexico, 6 to 12,000 believed to have died from cholera on the Oregon Morman trail, 4,500 dead in St. Louis, 3,000 in New Orleans it would ultimately take the life of former United States president James K. Polk.
1854, being considered the worst year of that particular pandemic, England saw more than 23,000 lives taken from cholera. Fortunately, John Snow (no relation to the brotherhood of the night watch) knew more than most might have assumed. Now considered to be (at least one of them) the founder of modern epidemiology, working with the affected in SOHO, London he noticed clusters of the illness near a water pump. The number of cholera cases sharply declined after Snow was able to convince city officials to remove the handle to the water pump.
Despite the fact that John Snow’s efforts helped to bring the 3rd Cholera Pandemic under control, there have still been four more outbreaks, the last pandemic ocurring between 1961-75. More recently, Zimbabwe declared a state of emergency over a cholera outbreak that started in 1918. Algeria saw a minor outbreak that same year and the year before it Yemen saw a resurgence of the cholera it has struggled with for some time.
4 – 1889-1890 Flu Pandemic
The advent of railroads helped introduce the modern world to a much faster delivery system of deadly pathogens. Considered the last great pandemic of the 19th century, the “Asiatic” or “Russian Flu” would kill more than one million people world wide. This pandemic also marked the beginning of modern government response to pandemics. When the flu hit Malta, the government had already made it a legal obligation to report infectious disease but influenza was not included in that list. That changed in 1890 and the people of Malta were required to report their illness.
Just as rapidly as the flu spread throughout the world in 1889, so too did fear, rumors, suspicions and misinformation about the flu. Just as newspapers and the media is being today, so too was this case then too, that they were largely alarmist about the outbreak. That is, alarmist after they were first dismissive of the deadly threat. In the beginning of the outbreak, doctors were unsure what the source of the illness was. Contemporary understanding of influenza was limited.
Indeed, the origin of the word influenza is Latin for “influence.” Influenza’s were diseases that were often seen as being influenced by supernatural events or some kind of mysticism. While doctors and nurses were working towards understanding the illness, much of the newspapers were suggesting it was a mild illness. Nothing that a little rest and lots of water couldn’t cure. Of course, in the end, it turned out to be a much more deadly pandemic.
3 – The Spanish Flu (1918 flu pandemic)
Although long known as the “Spanish Flu,” the H1N1 influenza A pandemic of 1918 has various hypothesis of where this flu actually originated. Some argue this pandemic started in North America, more specifically Kansas. Others argue it may have come from British soldiers in France as early as 1916. Others have pointed to China, only this time suggesting the virus originated there because China managed to escape the high mortality rate leading to speculation that they had already achieved herd immunity.
Regardless of where it originated it was perhaps the deadliest pandemic the world has ever known. With a third of the world’s population (500 million) infected and anywhere from 50 million to even maybe 100 million deaths. “One of the most striking aspects of the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 was the heavy toll on the young adult population.” Like this Corona-virus, the H1N1 strain also showed different geographic areas less affected by the flu than others.
A more recent analysis of the death toll (citing a paper co-written with Anthony Fauci) suggests that “most fatalities had secondary pneumonia’s caused by common bacteria.” The difference between people who died of the Spanish Flu and those who died while infected might suggest a lower actual death count for that pandemic. This factor is similar to the CDC revising the death toll by downgrading the actual number during this present pandemic.
2 – The Asian Flu (1956-1958)
Killing, at a minimum 1 million people across the globe, this strain of H2N2 originated in Guizhou, China. From there it spread to Hong Kong, then Singapore and eventually the United States
The Plauge of Athens
The Plague of Athens: Epidemiology and Paleopathology Mount Saini Journal of Medicine 2009
Past Pandemics that Ravaged Europe BBC Nov 7, 2005
Thucydides The History of the Pelloponesian War
History of the Pelloponesian War 2.52
1 Antonine Plague
“II It were indeed more happy and comfortable, for a man to depart out of this world, having lived his life long clear from all falsehood, dissimilation, voluptuousness and pride. But if this cannot be, yet is some comfort for a man joyfully to depart as weary, and out of love with those; rather than desire to live, and to continue long into the wicked courses. Hath not yet experience taught thee to fly from the plague? For a far greater plague is the corruption of the mind, than any certain change and distemper of the common air can be. This is a plague of creatures, as they are living creatures, but that of men as they are men or reasonable.”
Antonine Plague (Plague of Galen) Wikipedia
Memento Mori – Marcus Aurelius and the Antonine Plague
Marcus Aurelius Meditations IX.2
“Let’s call it Trumpvirus” NYT Feb 26, 2020
2 Plague of Justinian
The end of antiquity. “The growing inclusion of natural scientific data in historical analysis is a positive development, but since historians are less knowledgeable about how to read and apply these tools, they sometimes overestimate historical effects. Scientists, who are rarely aware of historial nuances, further exacerbate this simplification and frequently argue for large scale social and political changes. These simple causal models proliferate in studies that examine pre-modern environments.”
Rejecting Catastrophe: The Case of the Justinianic Plauge August 29, 2019
Plague of Justinian Wikipedia
10 of the Worst Pandemics in History
3 The Black Death
Most fatal pandemic recorded in human history. Anywhere from 75 million to 200 million died from this bubonic plague between 1347 and 1351. The second recorded plague (the first being the Justinian Plague) profoundly affected the course of history in Europe bringing about religious, social and economic upheavals.
The Origin of Quarantine Clinical Infectious Diseases Nov 1, 2002
1492: The Columbian Exchange
Virgin Soil Epidemic
How Europeans brought sickness to the new world Science Magazine Jun 4, 2015
Origins of Syphilis…Science Direct Sept-Oct 2010
3rd Cholera Pandemic and 7 pandemics
1889-1890 Flu Pandemic
The Spanish Flu
The Asian Flu