History’s deadliest pandemics, from ancient Rome to modern America
Source: Washington Post
What an astonishing chart:
The graphic above is surprisingly encouraging and optimistic. It shows the accumulated total mortality of pandemics from Roman times to today. Centuries before coronavirus, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and other contagions killed hundreds of millions around the world.
Pandemics through history have become far less deadly as we learned the basics of sanitation in a permanent residential society; Modern medicine and scientific advancements have developed treatments, vaccines and cures.
If we assume the mortality count of Covid-19 falls somewhere between the 200,000 lost from Swine flu of 2009 and the million lost in the Hong Kong flu 1968-1970, this would among the worst pandemics of the post-1970 modern era.
Check out the full history of pandemics at the Washington Post.
