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Dec 7, 2023 · Some death tolls have been estimated through epidemiological modeling – based on knowledge of the transmission of the disease and its geographical spread, its fatality rate (the share of people affected who die from it), access to treatment, and other types of data.
Not included in the above table are many waves of deadly diseases brought by Europeans to the Americas and Caribbean. Western Hemisphere populations were ravaged mostly by smallpox, but also typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis.
EventYearsLocationDisease1350 BC plague of Megiddoc. 1350 BCMegiddo, land of CanaanAmarna letters EA 244, Biridiya, mayor of ...Hittite Plague /"Hand of Nergal"c. 1330 BCNear East, Hittite Empire, Alashiya, ...Unknown, possibly Tularemia. Mentioned in ...430–426 BCGreece, Libya, Egypt, EthiopiaUnknown, possibly typhus, typhoid fever ...412 BCGreece ( Northern Greece, Roman Republic ...Unknown, possibly influenzaNov 15, 2021 · History’s Seven Deadliest Plagues. SARS-CoV-2 has officially claimed 5 million lives, but credible estimates place the pandemic’s true death toll closer to 17 million. Either count secures COVID-19’s position on our list of history’s deadliest plagues. 15 November 2021.
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Mar 14, 2020 · Today’s visualization outlines some of history’s most deadly pandemics, from the Antonine Plague to the current COVID-19 event. A Timeline of Historical Pandemics Disease and illnesses have plagued humanity since the earliest days, our mortal flaw.
- Deaths: 5 Million • Cause: Measles and Smallpox
- Deaths: 30-50 Million • Source: Rats and Fleas
- Deaths: 75-200 Million • Source: Rats and Fleas
- Deaths: 25-55 Million • Cause: Variola Virus
- Deaths: 75,000-100,000 • Source: Rats and Fleas
- Deaths: 1 Million • Cause: v. cholerae Bacteria
- Deaths: 150,000 • Source: Mosquitoes
- Deaths: 50 Million • Cause: H1N1
- Deaths: 1 Million • Cause: H2N2
- Deaths: 200,000 • Cause: H1N1
Many historians trace the fall of the Roman empire back to the Antonine Plague, which swept Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Nobody has ever nailed down the exact cause, but symptoms recorded by a physician named Galen — gruesome skin sores, high fever, diarrhea and sore throats — strongly suggest it was smallpox and measles. How’d it get ...
Thought to be the world’s first episode of bubonic plague, its namesake was the Byzantine emperor who was in power when it hit, likely arriving in the form of infected fleas hitching rides across the world on the backs of rodents. Frank M. Snowden, a Yale historian who studies pandemics, wrote in his book “Epidemics and Society” that definitive acc...
History Today, a monthly magazine of historical writing published in London, calls this pandemic “the greatest catastrophe ever.” The number of deaths — 200 million — is just astounding. Put it this way: That would be like wiping out roughly 65 percent of the current U.S. population. Like the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death was caused by the b...
Explorers arrived to the New World bearing more than just turnips and grapes. They also brought smallpox, measles and other viruses for which New World inhabitants had no immunity. “Although we may never know the exact magnitudes of the depopulation, it is estimated that upwards of 80–95 percent of the Native American populationwas decimated within...
Again, blame the rats with those pesky fleas on their backs: “They were attracted by city streets filled with rubbish and waste, especially in the poorest areas,” according to the National Archives in England. While doctors, lawyers and royalty fled town, the poor were ravaged by the disease. “Watchmen locked and kept guard over infected houses,” t...
Few societies have been spared by this highly infectious bacteria, which is transmitted via feces-contaminated water and causes severe diarrhea and vomiting. The epidemic that swept London in 1854 spawned the sort of epidemiological investigations that take place in disease outbreaks today. That’s thanks to John Snow, an English physician who almos...
This viral infection is endemic to South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Spread by female mosquitoes, the disease gets its name because it often turns the skin of sufferers a distinct shade of yellow. In 1793, yellow fever swept through Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital, killing roughly 10 percent of the population. President George Washingto...
The covid-19 pandemic has inspired lots of comparisons to the 1918 flu, sometimes called the Spanish flu, which got its name not because it originated in Spain but because it was World War I, and Spain was the only country being honest about the toll the pandemic took on the country. The flu came in two waves, starting in 1918 and ending in 1920. T...
One man saw it coming: Maurice Hilleman. The doctor later regarded as the godfather of vaccines was working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1957 when he read a New York Times article about a nasty flu outbreak in Hong Kong that mentioned glassy-eyed children at a clinic. “Something about their eyes tipped him off,” according to Smi...
Before covid-19, this was the world’s most recent pandemic, infecting as much as 21 percent of the world’s population. Swine flu was a hodgepodge of several different flu strains that had never been collectively seen together. Most of those infected by swine flu were children and young adults, with older people — those most at-risk of dying from th...
Mar 17, 2020 · Three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history were caused by a single bacterium, Yersinia pestis, a fatal infection otherwise known as the plague.
May 10, 2023 · 2009 H1N1. Whooping cough. HIV. COVID-19. Staying updated. The U.S. has experienced many outbreaks over the last few centuries. These includes three waves of cholera and the 2020 spread...
