"What ended the Black Death, history's worst pandemic" Topic

"While the world continues to suffer from the onslaught of COVID-19, its toll has yet to approach the grim statistics of history's deadliest pandemic–the Black Death. Also called the Black Plague, this terrible illness afflicted Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s, with new outbreaks over several centuries. It killed about a third of the European population when it began–nearly 20 million people. Over a few years, the total for the extremely contagious plague is estimated to have reached as high as 200 million victims globally.

The bubonic plague first came to Europe in 1347, aboard 12 trading ships from the Black Sea that docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Most of the sailors on those ships were either dead or terribly ill, covered in black boils full of blood and pus. By the time the authorities tried to send these ships away, it was too late and the plague started spreading. This was due, in particular, to the fact that the disease did not only transmit through air but also through the bites of infected fleas and rats. These were plentiful in Europe of the time, and a real mainstay aboard ships, which carried the plague from port to port. The illness also spread to livestock like cows and sheep and even chicken…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Death rate comparison:

Black Death: 33%

COVID-19: less than 1%

Wait, 'the fact that the disease did not only transmit through air'?

While I'm not up on my Black Death history, I've only heard of airborne transmission as a speculation based on assumed speed of ratborne flea transmission not being fast enough to account for the observed spread…and NOT as the first vector to be mentioned when describing the outbreaks.

This seems a bit like the author is trying to make associations between the Black Death and COVID that don't, or may not, exist.

EDIT: Wikipedia (I know, I know, trust me, I know) has he primary vector as fleas, but pneumoic plague being spread as aerosols, addressing the speed of transmission I mentioned. That's from recent research, apparently:

Snowden, Frank M. (2019). Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19221-6.

I still stand by my general assertion that the author is attempting to draw comparisons where they are tenuous at best.

USAFpilot, just took this from the CDC website, " Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to PIC for week 48 was 12.8% and, while declining compared with week 47 (18.6%), remains above the epidemic threshold.". We truly won't know the actual rate until the pandemic is over since things change from day to day.

There is an excellent "Great Courses Plus" available on the Black Death. It was a freebie last month on Amazon Prime.

There were indeed several strains of the plague as mentioned above, with differing fatality rates and forms of transmission. Pneumonic plague primarily affected the lungs, and was spread via aerosols. The other forms of plague were septicemic and bubonic. These were primarily spread via flea and vermin bites.

Total deaths from the virus compared to the overall population.

USA: 280,000 reported dead from COVID-19 (anecdotal evidence that this number is greatly exaggerated), out of a population of 330,000,000 = 0.08%

Actual death rates of those infected is a different calculation. For the Black Plague which killed 33% of the population I think the actual death rate for those infected was 100%.

And we also have to consider that we can save people now that we couldn't before. I actually had a relative (2nd cousin) that got bubonic plague and survived. Who knows what the survival rate would be now for the plague.

I remember doing a project on the Black Death back in my University days, oh so long ago. If memory serves me correctly, there were 3 strains of bubonic plague, ranging from a 30% – 99% fatality rate for the infected.

Back then the populations were a lot more sparse than today, apart from the cities; and people were more willing to self-isolate, than today's largely self-serving populace. Also, it became pretty self-evident if you had the plague, not so much with CV19. There was certainly none of this idiocy over herd immunity back then.

So far, I know 14 people that have had CV19, 3 died, 2 ladies (only in their 30s) now have life changing injuries that will require care, and 9 survived relatively intact.

It's a disease that I take seriously, because none of us know how it will affect us. I would rather die than be so brain damaged that I require care.

Agree!.

Amicalement
Armand

CV19 may yet mutate as it is in south west England right now, this could get worse!

A very recent British TV documentary on the 1665 outbreak finally broke the "rats and fleas" link for the Great Plague of that year.
The parish bills of mortality – published contemporaneously in London – have been closely analysed and have shown that the plague first erupted in the poor residential quarters north and north-west of the City of London and well AWAY from the riverside and away from the docks. In other words any ship-borne rats would have had to travel a long way from the riverside to reach these outbreak points.

It was several weeks before the Great Plague of 1665 started to appear in the City and it only slowly made progress there as the more affluent City people washed and changed their clothes more frequently. By that time the death toll in the poor north-west and northerly suburbs had sky-rocketed and it was appearing in the eastern suburbs.

What the programme finally proved is that the transmission was person-to-person, principally by body lice and -to a lesser extent – by fleas. There was also the mystery of how it reached the isolated northern village of Eyam in Derbyshire, the village which voted to quarantine itself 1665/66 to prevent passing it on. That village had just received a supply of cloth from London and it is thought that the lice travelled in the cloth and then passed to the villagers. So secondary transmission from fabrics and bedding was also possible.

The Black Death of 1348 has been the subject of much debate as the reported prognosis and symptoms of the disease do not much later observations. It has been suggested that the Black Death may have been an entirely different disease or at least a plague variant which was far more aggressive and virulent.

As to what would end an outbreak of anything… The most obvious end is the death or survival of the most vulnerable members of the population. The massive death toll of 1348 would remove the greatest vector for the disease to propagate – the living. The dead are no longer infectious. Meanwhile the survivors might gain an immunity.

Finally awareness of the disease and counter-measures such as social isolation and quarantine would cause the disease to lose its potency.

One Eyam TV documentary also discovered that the descendants of survivors still have a natural immunity today. Those original 1666 victims who had two parents with this immunity never got ill while those who had one parent who carried the immunity got ill but nearly always recovered. Other families with no inherited immunity were virtually wiped out which is why there is a strong concentration of immunity today in people who were born to Eyam residents.

Barry

This is the documentary I was referring to.
It is available on MY5:

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