Pandemic is a condition in which any specific disease or infection crosses it geographical boundaries and spread all over the world. In the history of human life, there have been several times when the whole human race was under attack of single disease or infection throughout the globe.
Those who cause more human losses and made human suffered were recorded as the worst pandemic. Here are the top 10 worst pandemic in global history in which life had suffered a lot.
1# The Antonine plague
The Antonine plague sometimes referred to as the plague of
Galen dates back to 165 C II. The Roman Empire was at its height and the plague
Upton right at the beginning of the last good Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius.
In his reign, the pandemic happened in two different waves. The first last until
180 affecting the entirety of the Roman Empire.
The second occurred between 251 and266 C II and was even more intense and regarded as worst pandemic. Since it's ancient setting, we don't know much about the origin of the plague or its development, it believed it emerged in China and spread to the west through the Silk Road by trading ships headed for Rome as reported by Roman historian daisies during the first wave at the height of the outbreak.
The
deaths were estimated to be around 2,000 per day just in Rome during the second
outbreak the estimated height to reach 5,000deaths per day. historians have
suggested that 67 million people perished throughout the empire basically a
quarter to a third of the entire population of the earth died. Now once again
given the lack of scientific knowledge on the matter the only way to overcome
the pandemic was heard immune tea.
2# SAR
Another worst pandemic, Right in between HIV and swine flu, we had SARS a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by one of the coronaviruses. Yet there are many of them that can infect humans the outbreak originated in 2002 in China and soon became a global pandemic due to the viruses fast-spreading characteristics. ARS rapidly reached 26 countries infecting over 8,000 people and killing 774 of them and I know we are thinking compared to other numbers especially those of COVID-19 that doesn't seem much.
The truth is we were lucky and we owe a lot to the global immediate Public Health response the final illness of the scientific community working together with its unprecedented collaboration among laboratories around the world.
Which led quickly to identify the causative agent the mapping of
its genome and the development of reliable diagnostic tests, even more
importantly there was a total openness and willingness to share critical
scientific information properly with the population. This is not so prevalent
today it seems.
3# HIV and AIDS
The fight against HIV is tragically still going and we all
hope that one day let's hope soon, we'll finally find a cure to destroy the
virus for good. With this said we think it's important to remind particularly
the younger generations the impact of this disease. AIDS appeared on the scene as
an actual pandemic in the early 1980s. Remembering those times is still an open
wound for many because it's a constant reminder of how prejudice and politics
helped spread the virus.
In fact, since the first cases happened to be among the
homosexual community. It wasn't considered a primary issue in fact to a lot of
the media. It almost seemed the problem didn't even exist since then 75 million
people have had the HIV virus and approximately 32million people have died from
it.
In the following years from the world, folk decided to recognize this new and devastating disease as the worst pandemic. Researchers over the globe did their best to come up with a cure and even if the cure is still yet to be found today there are antiretroviral drugs available for the treatment of HIV infection.
The most effective treatments antiretroviral therapy
involves taking a combination of HIV medicines called an HIV treatment regimen every
day. Researchers believe that the Klein sand HIV infections are due in large
parts to people living with HIV, who know their HIV status and can avoid
spreading it additionally. Studies have shown that early treatments can
dramatically reduce a person's risk of transmitting the infection to others.
4# Swine flu
Swine flu yet not Spanish this time it’s straight to swine flu. Now this epidemic is relatively recent when compared to others it dates back to 2009 when the virus was first identified in Mexico but it was soon discovered that it had crossed the borders and spread quickly from country to country so it in our list of worst pandemic.
Now, why is it called swine flu?
Well, it appeared to be similar to flu viruses that affect pigs but most important of all is that for once the outbreak of the pandemic turned out to be less serious than it was predicted. In fact, quite a few people turned out to be immune to it. However, it didn’t spare people from tragic loss there were around fourteen thousand deaths worldwide, with children young adults and pregnant women being the most affected happily though within a few months the US began.
Administering a newly approved h1n1 vaccine and the
World Health Organization declared the pandemic officially over the following
year science won the day yet again.
5
I know the current situation may look pretty bad and it's quite easy to be discouraged. But we will get through this. In fact, think about It, school studies might have told you that human history is full of deadly cataclysms plague of Justinian. For once, one of the first-ever recorded pandemics in ancient history. It happened in 541 B.C and spread across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire Egyptian territories encountered as worst pandemic.
As tradition had to pay tribute to their Emperor ingrain but you know what that may have been a good opportunity to change though traditions because the plague was spread by fleas of black rats that snapped on the grain.
Just imagine at that time people had no idea how bacteria and virus have worked
so the plague is thought to have killed between 30 and 50 million people
roughly half of the world’s population. At the time and the way, it was beaten
well accidental herd immunity, since nobody knew how else to combat it.
6# Spanish flute
Majority people today see the current situation as unique
almost unreal and they're right. It's a massive historical moment that unites
the world however not many people remember that almost a century ago. The world
faced a pretty similar situation and even worse.
The Spanish flu exploded in 1918 and is considered the deadliest and worst pandemic in modern history the pandemic, lasted for two years and killed 50 million people. The first deadly case happened in March of 1918 in Kansas, not Spain.
In the next few days in an attempt to halt the fast-spreading
of the virus, city officials launched campaigns against coughing spitting and
sneezing in public sounds familiar right and it gets creepier influenza cases
kept rising until in October. Schools, churches, theatres and public gathering
spaces were shut down across.
Eventually, people had to learn to cope with the virus and
adapt their lives until the flu as it appeared vanished but what we should all
keep in mind particularly now is that studies revealed that the key to
flattening the curve in 1918 was social distancing just like it is today.
7# Cholera
If smallpox sounded bad wait until you hear a rat cholera. The
disease first appeared in Jess or India during the19th century. However Western
countries didn’t really care until as usual, it reached them so when this worst pandemic reached England in 1832. The first prevailing theory was that the
disease was spread through foul air, surely polluted air wasn't helping in fact,
it never does.
However, in this case, the virus carrier wasn't fair. British
doctor John Snow investigate to the hospital records and tried to track down
the precise location of the outbreak and it wasn’t easy since the virus killed
its victims within days of the first appearance of symptoms. Still, he mapped
the deaths around a cluster of 500 fatal infections surrounding the Broad
Street pump in London, a popular city.
Well, snow convinced local officials to make the drinking
well inaccessible and the infections cut down. Snow didn't beat cholera
overnight but put a light on the importance of urban sanitation and protecting
drinking water from contamination.
8# Smallpox
Smallpox is a topic that’s been discussed for many years,
that's because it's a disease that’s been around for a long time. Centuries
before it was definitely beaten, smallpox was already quite persistent in
Europe, Asia and Arabia. When the new world was founded, it’s estimated it
killed 3 out of 10 people infected and left the rest with pockmarked scars.
All the old continents turn to coexist with the worst pandemic that the pox moved on literally to the Americas. The problem was that
indigenous people have no immunity to the virus so not only did the
imperialists take their lands and resources, they even brought them a deadly
disease as a gift. How kind of them the epidemic killed approximately 20
million people 90% of the population at the time. It took centuries before the
vaccine was finally discovered by reward Jenner in 1796.
Jenner notice that milkmaids who had previously had cowpox
appeared to be immune from smallpox. Since cowpox symptoms were mild and a
full recovery was usually possible, he inoculated an eight-year-old boy with as
ample of call pox disease, several months later he injected the same boy with
the dose of smallpox and discovered that he was then immune. However, this worst pandemic and disease was only officially eradicated in 1980.
9# The Great Plague of London
In 1665 England London precisely that year has mainly been
remembered for the Great Plague of London. The epidemic was one of the last and
worst of the century. It killed 100,000 Londoners in just seven months, trying
to contain the plague the government banned all public entertainment that may
sound familiar and infected people were forced into their homes additionally. To
be sure no one got in contact with infected they marked their doors with red
crosses.
If and when the sick died, they were buried in mass graves. All
of these precautions were helpful of course but the Great Fire of London of the
following year might have inadvertently helped - the fire burned steadily for
three days and wiped out 5/6 of the city, since Paul’s Cathedral together with
87 churches and about 13,000 buildings were destroyed, luckily human losses
weren't that much though but the fire could have helped purify the air and
maybe sped up the recovery of the already diminished infected cases that later
disappeared.
10# The Black Death
The so-called black death hit European in 1347. The pandemic killed 200 million people in just four years and was recorded as the worst pandemic of that time. There is a bright side though I mean they still had no scientific proof of how contagion worked but at some point, they’ve realized it had something to do with proximity and so it was around that time. They invented quarantine.
Everything started in the Venetian controlled port city for the goose' in Italy, where a few officials decided to be cautious and keep newly arrived sailors in isolation on their ships for at least 30 days. In this way, they could be absolutely sure they wouldn't pass the disease on to anybody else, however, it turned out that 30 days was not enough so Venetians increase the isolation period to 40 days, which became known as quarantine.
This was an overview of the worst historical pandemic in global history that has caused more human losses.