Just over 2 years ago, we've been plagued by a virus that caused a major behavioral change in the postmodern world. COVID-19 gained prominence as the biggest pandemic of this century and one of the biggest in recent history.
However, similar crises have been recorded in human history since ancient Rome. Follow and read and find out what were the worst pandemics in the world!
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Read more: Diseases that marked the history of humanity – Historical pandemics
To begin with, let's understand what characterizes a pandemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is a highly contagious disease that spreads quickly throughout the global territory.
Kicking things off, we'll start with the smallpox pandemic. This disease recurs several times in human history.
It is estimated that around 500 million people died as a result of the smallpox pandemic in the last century alone. Furthermore, historians believe that it originated in India.
The virus that causes the Spanish flu still lives among us today, it is the well-known Influenza. However, when the disease began to be a problem, there were no adequate treatments and the contagion was very high. Thus, the Spanish flu quickly spread around the world and killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.
The pandemic caused by this disease happened in 1918 and it scared people because the virus attacked healthy people, young people and adults. A curiosity is that, despite being called the Spanish flu, the disease did not originate in Spain.
The Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, killed approximately 200 million people around the globe and happened between 1346 to 1353. Europe, Africa and Asia were the regions most affected by the disease.
Researchers believe that the disease originated in Central Asia, however it soon spread to other territories. The rat fleas present on merchant ships may have been largely responsible for the proliferation of the bacteria.
Caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholerae, Cholera is always resurfacing due to its constant mutations. To this day, it is considered a pandemic.
Some countries on the African continent and Latin America are the ones with the most cases of the disease today. There are immunizing vaccines for Cholera, however, they are not affordable for everyone.
Also known as the Asian Flu, Influenza A H2N2 killed an average of 2 million people worldwide in the 1950s. This flu is formed by one of the variants of Influenza and had the beginning of its outbreak registered in China.
One of the countries most affected by the disease was the United States, which had approximately 69,800 deaths.
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