Black Death: Causes, Fatalities, and Effects of the Plague

Here we have it: We may be looking at the years 2020-2021 and think a certain virus has been bad for the world population. However, what happened in these two years is nothing, proportionally, to the hundreds of millions of people who got wiped out by rat infestations spreading insanitary bacteria, resulting in the disease and death of huge parts of the European population in the mid-centuries.

The genesis or origin of the Black Death is a point of contention. The epidemic started in Central Asia or East Asia, but it wasn't till 1347 that it made its conclusive presence in Crimea. It spread out through the Mediterranean Basin, reaching Africa, Western Asia, and the remainder of Europe through Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula, probably brought by fleas surviving on black rats carried by Genoese servant ships. There's proof that the Black Death was spread out in big part by fleas-- which trigger pneumonic plague-- and the person-to-person contact by means of aerosols that pneumonic plague permits, which would clarify the epidemic's fast inland spread out, which would be expected if the main vector was rat fleas triggering bubonic plague.

The Black Death was the 2nd significant natural catastrophe to strike Europe in the late Middle Ages (the first being the Great Scarcity of 1315-- 1317), killing between 30 and sixty percent of Europe's population.

In the 14th century, the plague disease might have decreased the worldwide population from c. 475 million to 350-- 375 million. So, more than 100 million people died from it, which was almost a fourth of the world’s population.

To mention that such were difficult times, is an understatement. My empathy for those unfortunate souls has reached an entire new level of suffering. I don’t know about you, but when I did my research, I wanted to know more about it. I hope you feel the same way.

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Hljóðbók: 20 maj 2022