In every corner, the subject is about the Pandemic that planet Earth is going through right now... But do you know that this Pandemic doesn't even compare to one that already happened back in the 1,300s? Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about the Black Death or more frighteningly, the Black Death.
To give you an idea of the damage this Pandemic has done, it is estimated that it has killed 75 to 200 million people, and I didn't type it wrong, that's right from 75 to 200 MILLION people.
For you to have an idea of the damage that this Pandemic has done, it is estimated that only on the European continent one-third died because of this terrible disease.
The height of the Black Death's contamination occurred between the years 1346 and 1353. Scholars believe that before the Pandemic the world population was approximately 450 million people and that at its end the population was reduced to 350-375 million.
If we stop to think about it, at that time there were only 450 million people in the world... Today we are already over 7 billion, imagine the damage it would do if the population today was the same amount as in the 1300s? Or worse, what if a Pandemic of this magnitude emerged these days? I don't even want to think about such a possibility.
In the end, What is the origin of the Black Death?
It is believed that the plague originated in the arid plains of Central Asia, that is… it is believed, but nothing has yet been proven.
The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted to humans through fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis) on black rats (Rattus rattus) or other rodents.
If we stop to think about it, the great epidemics came from animals. The one we are experiencing (Coronavirus) is a very common virus in bats and some other animals. Also the Spanish flu that killed 17 to 100 million people in the early 1900s is from the influenza virus family, influenza is of bovine origin. And the Black Death as I said was transmitted to human beings through fleas and rats.
One of the countries that suffered the most in Black Death deaths was Portugal, some studies point out that the population of that country was reduced by half.
The world has already gone through 3 epidemics of the Black Death. The third occurred in the 19th century and killed an estimated 12 million people in China and India.
It is worth mentioning that, in this third epidemic, the health teams, as they already knew about its high mortality rate, managed to avoid a much worse damage in the world. In short, well more than 12 million people could have died.
What we currently know is that since this third epidemic until today the world has not reported new reports of Black Death cases.
But we can't relax, the first Black Death Pandemic occurred in the 1300's and the Epidemic that killed 12 million people in India and China occurred in the 1850's, a difference of approximately 650 years.
