Deadliest Pandemics in History

With all the over the top fear mongering in media these days such as

The 2020’s world deadliest pandemic: Corona Virus (COVID-19)

It's always nice to take a step back and put things into historical perspective.

ceufast.com...

Past pandemics that are commonly taught about in schools were associated with either smallpox or Yersinia pestis. Yersinia pestis is a bacterium that was responsible for the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Plague. The Black Plague death toll was around 25 million people, and there were also several resurgences over the course of the following 300 years, leading to millions more casualties. Yersinia pestis is also thought to have been responsible for the Plague of Justinian, one of the earliest recorded plagues, between the years of 483 and 565.

Smallpox has killed more people than any of the other pandemics in history. The best-known smallpox epidemic was between 1519 and 1520 in Mexico. It’s said to have claimed roughly 80% of the native population. The total number of casualties is estimated between 5 and 8 million. However, between 1877 and 1977, smallpox killed more than 500 million people.

The Spanish Flu, another of the worst pandemics in history, had a much faster death rate than smallpox: It killed more than 50 million people between 1918 and 1919.

To say that COVID-19 is the most significant pandemic of our lifetime is up for debate, but it’s certainly the fastest-spreading. However, HIV/AIDS has been responsible for far more deaths, more than 32 million since 1981. COVID-19 has killed more than 1,080,000 people in less than a year. The diseases are different in many ways, but due to the airborne nature of COVID-19, it has led to nationwide quarantines in many countries. It has affected the way of life of people all across the globe.

A nice visual infographic comparison. You may notice the very tiny bubble that is covid-19 down at the bottom. They say pictures speak louder than words so i'm gonna let the infographic do the talking.

I wonder why this source has the Black Death listed so low at only 25 million deaths? The number usually reported is in the vicinity of 75-200 million. And then for the Smallpox figures they take the highest estimate. And the fact that it's over a 100 year period doesn't seem fair either. Anyway, cool graph, thanks for sharing.

a reply to: dug88

According to this graph, Covid 19 is deadlier than HIV/AIDS.

a reply to: dug88

Hmm there are also non biological disease, political one's.

Capitalism is responsible for more death over time than ANY disease, it is endemic to all human cultures in one form or another.

Communism a short lived epidemic that almost got out of control killed more in less time but was over fairly fast compared to capitalism so it's entire tole of victims is smaller.

Then there are the various strain's.


But biological pathogen's, well.

Virus are always nasty except bacteriophage which keep bacteria in check, Bacteria can mutate from relatively harmless, even benign to utterly deadly and some of those can lie dormant for a very long time as spores.

Fungal infections are thankfully fairly rare though there are some conspiracy's about a link between fungal and several disease including cancer which may mean they are downplayed or not yet fully understood in there relationship to human ailment's though of course we all know about athletes foot and certain itchy conditions suffered by mostly but not solely promiscuous men and woman.

Your body is always fighting a constant battle between harmful parasites, environmental factors and your immune system BUT it is also a battleground between harmful and benign - even beneficial bacteria.

What makes Covid, Aids and other such diseases so deadly is that we do not yet have a population wide immunity toward them.

New diseases will always adapt to avoid our immune response OR be ALTERED artificially by some lunatic's somewhere to do so.

It is also worth noting that the graph you put up does not factor in percentage of world population or diseases such as the black death would be shown to have been far more deadly as would cholera and several other conditions' though you already know this.

a reply to: Atsbhct

32,000,000+ is a bigger number than 1,080,000+

AIDS/HIV -------- Covid
32 million > 1 million

a reply to: dug88

HIV has been around for 39 years. Thats 820,500 deaths per year approximately on average. Covid has killed 1 million plus in less than a year. That's why this graph does nothing to put Covid 19 into perspective historically.

a reply to: dug88

If you think about it, the people claiming this are the same people who continue to erase our history. I heard michelle obama saying this is the worst crisis in our lifetimes, but when she didn't need to use it as an attack against the president, she would use something else like slavery, or civil rights in the 60's. I guess she forgot about those when it didn't benefit her attempted attack.

originally posted by: Aptom90
I wonder why this source has the Black Death listed so low at only 25 million deaths? The number usually reported is in the vicinity of 75-200 million. And then for the Smallpox figures they take the highest estimate. And the fact that it's over a 100 year period doesn't seem fair either. Anyway, cool graph, thanks for sharing.

That's still up to 2 million per year. Considering the population when it began was 50 million, that's quite a lot. In comparison to today, that would be like losing 13,200,000 a year to coronavirus.

a reply to: LSU2018

I think it's way more than that. Going by their stats it's 5 million deaths a year (25 million from 1347-51). A quick search has the population of the world at around 475 million at the start of the Black death, so 5 million out of 0.475 is equivalent to 80 million in today's population of 7.6 billion. If you use the dates on Wikipedia (1346-53) and the higher estimate (200 million) that's 25 million per year over a 8 year stretch or 400 million per year adjusted to today's population. Absolutely staggering numbers dwarfing everything else in the list. The lower wiki figure of 75 million still equals 150 million per year or 1.2 billion over the 8 year stretch.


A few more figures.

Deaths adjusted to 2020 population:

Plague of Justinian 541-549 AD = 1-1.8 Billion over the course of 9 years or so depending on your source
Black Plague 1346-1353 = 1.2-3.2 Billion over the course of about 8 years
Spanish Flu 1918-1920 = 72-211 million over the course of 3 years

a reply to: Atsbhct

Ah but let’s not forget the majority of covid deaths are with covid and not of it.

650,000 died with the flu in 2017, why don’t we have lockdowns and all that for the flu?

a reply to: surfer_soul

But that's kind of the same as HIV/AIDS, it's a secondary infection/disease that kills, and the HIV/AIDS prevents the person from healing.

And I didn't mention the flu. Just that the graph doesn't really offer perspective.

originally posted by: surfer_soul
a reply to: Atsbhct

Ah but let’s not forget the majority of covid deaths are with covid and not of it.

650,000 died with the flu in 2017, why don’t we have lockdowns and all that for the flu?

Flu numbers are notoriously unreliable. The figure you're reporting is just a Lancet estimate. The figure they came up with was 409,111 with a range of 291,243 - 645,832. Now those numbers seem quite high until you realize that the average they came up with for North and South America combined was 51,674. Compare that to the Covid-19 figure which is over 600,000 so far. Just food for thought. And I know, covid figures may be totally unreliable as well.

This is the paper which is the source of the figures:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

a reply to: Aptom90

If any of the figures for covid were factual, if it was real pandemic, then China where this thing supposedly started, with its densely packed population would be on its arse right now.

I know they locked down wuhan in the beginning, but it still got out and supposedly infected the rest of the world, so it would have ravaged through China if it were a real pandemic instead of a nasty flu that 80% of those tested positive for were asymtomatic! It’s been blown out of all proportion to serve an agenda. Which you can find out about on the world economic forums website or in Claus Schwabs book.

the new normal

originally posted by: surfer_soul
a reply to: Atsbhct

650,000 died with the flu in 2017, why don’t we have lockdowns and all that for the flu?

Because they couldn't use that as a political weapon at the time. Since the flu is always around, but the timing of this virus was perfect for their use!

a reply to: dug88

Does it really matter whose member is larger?

COVID-19 is deadly, like other deadly diseases. It has also only just been around for about a year.

a reply to: surfer_soul

They locked down travel from Wuhan to China, but not to every other corner of the world.

Also, "pandemic" just means a disease which spreads worldwide. A minor flu canbe a pandemic. This one is very clearly not a "nasty flu" as it comes from a coronavirus, not influenza.

a reply to: LABTECH767

OOOOww...yes..if you go that way, what about religion as a deadly disease. The number of fatalities does not fit the screen you are watching.