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The life sciences website, which specializes in life sciences, reviewed 20 epidemics among the worst in Earth’s history, from prehistoric times to the modern era, noting that the “Covid-19” pandemic did not is among them.
1. Prehistoric epidemic (3000 BC)
A mysterious epidemic wiped out a village in China about 5,000 years ago, and bodies of all ages were found inside a house that was later burned down.
The archaeological site is now called Hamin Mangha, and archaeological study indicates that the epidemic occurred fast enough that there was no appropriate time for burial.
2- Plague of Athena (430 BC)
In 430 BC, a mysterious epidemic that lasted for 5 years devastated the people of Athens, killing about 100,000 people, and among the possibilities that this disease was typhoid fever or Ebola.
3. The Plague of Antonina (165-180 AD)
When the soldiers returned to the Roman Empire from the campaigns, they were loaded with the Antonine plague, which devastated the army and killed more than 5 million, writes April Pudsey.
4. Plague of Cyprus (250-271 AD)
The Cyprus plague is estimated to have killed 5,000 people a day in Rome alone, and was named after Saint Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia) who described the epidemic as a sign of the end of the world.
5. The Plague of Justinian (541-542 AD)
It is named after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527-565 AD), whose reign the Byzantine Empire reached its maximum limit, and built a great cathedral known as the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul).
6. The Black Death (1346-1353)
The Black Death traveled from Asia to Europe and is estimated to have killed more than half of its population, caused by a strain of Yersinia pestis that will likely go extinct today.
The disease was transmitted by fleas to infected rodents and the bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves.
7. Epidemic of coccoliths (1545-1548)
The epidemic is caused by a form of viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed 15 million people in Mexico and Central America.
A recent study that examined the DNA from the skeletons of the victims found that they were infected with a salmonella subtype known as S. paratyphi C, which causes enteric fever, a class of fevers that includes typhoid fever.
8. American Epidemics: The 16th Century
It is a group of Eurasian diseases that European explorers brought to the Americas, including smallpox.
These diseases contributed to the collapse of the Inca and Aztec civilizations. By some estimates, 90% of the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere has died.
9. Great plague of London (1665-1666)
The plague (the Black Death) began in Britain in 1665 and spread rapidly during the summer months, and fleas that spread to infected rodents were a leading cause of infection, killing 100,000 people, including 15 % of London population.
10. The Great Plague of Marseilles (1720-1723)
Historical records indicate that the Great Plague began when a ship (Grand-Saint-Antoine) docked in Marseille, France, with a cargo of goods from the eastern Mediterranean, and through the fleas of plague-infected rodents it was transmitted to the humans.
In 3 years 100,000 people died and it is estimated that up to 30% of the population of Marseille died.
11. The Russian plague (1770-1772)
The plague devastated the city of Moscow and killed more than 100,000 people, and in that period the place became a mass grave that embraced the dead of the disease and the riots left by the epidemic.
12. Yellow fever epidemic (1793)
Yellow fever took hold of Philadelphia, the capital of the United States at the time, and the disease continued to be transmitted by mosquitoes that breed in the hot, humid summer weather, killing more than 5,000 people.
13. Influenza pandemic (1889-1890)
Influenza viruses from Russia spread to every country in the world in a few months, killing one million people.
14. Polio epidemic in the United States (1916)
The polio epidemic swept through New York City, causing 27,000 infections and 6,000 deaths, then spread to the rest of the states and continued to spread sporadically until the Salk vaccine was developed in 1954.
15. Spanish flu (1918-1920)
The total casualties (wounded and dead) are estimated at around 500 million people from the South Seas to the Arctic. A fifth of these people died and the epidemic brought some indigenous communities to the brink of extinction.
16. Asian influenza (1957-1958)
This pandemic has Chinese roots and is caused by a mixture of bird flu viruses and has killed more than 1.1 million worldwide, including 116,000 in the United States.
17. The AIDS pandemic (1981)
AIDS has killed an estimated 35 million people since its discovery, and is caused by an advanced virus that was transferred from chimpanzees to humans in West Africa during the 1920s, and about 64% of the total 40 million patients currently live in sub-Saharan Africa.
18. Swine influenza pandemic (2009-2010)
The 2009 pandemic was the result of a new strain of H1N1 that originated in Mexico and spread to the rest of the world, infecting more than 1.4 billion people worldwide and killing an estimated 575,400 people.
19- Ebola epidemic (2014-2016)
The virus may have originated in bats and Ebola devastated West Africa between 2014 and 2016, with 28,600 infections and 11,325 reported deaths.
20. Zika virus epidemic (2015)
The Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes aegypti, and can also be sexually transmitted in humans, and is active in South and Central America and parts of the southern United States.
It is not harmful to adults or children, but it can attack children still in the womb and cause birth defects, according to Al-Ain Al-Akhbariya.
