Big Pandemics Have Haunted Humanity Through The Ages
Pandemics have haunted humanity through the ages. When no one expects it, when no one believes it to be possible, another pandemic appears and changes the lives of millions around the globe.
This is alarming, we look at reality as if it were a nightmare. How can this happen when public health institutions can treat so many diseases with positive results? Farmaceutical companies are able to manufacture so many remedies to cure maladies, to solve public health crises with tremendous success. Yet, we realize that we are in the middle of something we cannot see the end of.
How can this happen with all the improvements of modern medicine? We still must face the devastating actions of an invisible and killing virus, with superpowers, over us.
Over a century ago one of them, the Spanish Flu, dissipated the world population by about 50 million. The virus infected 500 million worldwide, making this pandemic one of the most lethal among all documented so far.
Historians affirm that the second wave of the Spanish Flu was even more virulent than the first one. The number of deaths in the second wave increased exponentially in the Fall of 1918.
It was believed that a mutation of the virus caused the second wave, which was even more lethal. The Spanish Flu lasted two painful years but recently governments seem to have forgotten about it.
A Hundred Years After Spanish Flu
And again, a hundred years after that horrible nightmare, another pandemic is battering mankind. In the past viruses spread throughout countries without needing globalization. Nowadays with the reality of globalization, they travel much faster than before, to all countries on all continents.
These days globalization has been the most effective disperser of any contagious disease among human beings. Dangerous viruses clearly propagate all over the world like a metastasis in a body, showing that they can easily travel to all places if they find a carrier. Therefore, it makes it urgent for all governments to work together in favor of public health.
Since ancient times pandemics have always been present from time to time among human beings. They come and go without leaving traces, they kill many and ignore some others, they use some as carriers, they decimated entire populations in a short space of time.
Some of the most terrifying pandemics happened during a time when medicine and technology were not as advanced as they are today. But we contemplate the course of Covid-19 deaths without understanding the whole picture.
We keep asking questions that cannot be answered because of the complexity of these maladies. How do viruses like Covid-19 surge, why do they surge, what provokes their emergence? We feel small and helpless, we feel like we cannot find the ground under our feet.
Pandemics in History
Some of the most terrifying and documented pandemics that have haunted humanity throughout the ages:
- Plague of Athens – (-430-426) believed by many to have been caused by Typhoid Fever.
- The Antonine Plague (Smallpox) – (165 – 166 after Christ) believed origin from Mesopotamia, with 10 million deaths, Smallpox was declared irradicated in 1980.
- The Black Death is also known as Pestilence, Bubonic Plague, Plague – (1347 – 1352) devasted Europe killing 25 to 30 million people. The disease was carried by rat fleas and with believed Asian origin.
- Cholera – (first outbreak in 1817–1824 and the last and 7th in 1961–1975), appears to be endemic to India.
- The Spanish Flu – (1918 -1920) believed to be of Asian origin and having crossed the Atlantic Ocean with American soldiers during World War I.
- Asian Flu – (1956 – 1957) – originated from Asia.
- AIDS – (1981- to today) originated from Kinshasa, Congo.
Reference: Futura Sciences