During the spread of the Bubonic plague in the 14th Century ships arriving in Venice from infected ports would be required to wait 40 days before landing. This practice led to the origin of the word 'quarantine', from the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning 40 days.
This is just one of the many interesting facts in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists interactive map An Illustrated History of the World's Deadliest Epidemics. Using Mapbox's popular scrollytelling template this map takes you on an historical tour of some of the world's most lethal viral outbreaks. Starting with the Antonine plague (165–180 C.E.), which was the earliest known major smallpox epidemic, and ending with the COVID-19 epidemic of 2019, this map takes you on both a chronological and geographical tour of deadly epidemics.
It is estimated that COVID-19 has killed close to 21 million people worldwide. This means that COVID-19 has been one of the world's most lethal viruses in terms of the total number of people killed. However thanks to vaccinations the percentage of people killed by the virus pales into insignificance compared to other major epidemics. For example the Japanese Smallpox Epidemic (735–737 C.E.) killed a third of that country's population; the 1918 Flu pandemic is believed to have killed more people than the First World War; and, in Mexico, the Cocoliztli epidemics are believed to have killed around 80% of the entire Aztec population.
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