Written by: Sakshyam Karna - 26013, Grade VIII
Posted on: 10 February, 2022
In the last two years covid-19 has hit the world very badly. The pandemic made everything still. It shook the world's economy. Even SARS and ebola couldn't compare to the devastation done by the coronavirus. This was the biggest virus to have struck us since the so-called "Asian flu" in 1950 with over 4,000,000 deaths worldwide.
But the more we travel back in time the more we get more devastating outbreaks of such viruses. The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million people which was one third of the population of the world then. It is the equivalent of corona virus infecting 2.5 billion people today. This virus killed around 50 million people. And in the sixteenth century when the Europeans discovered America they brought many new inventions and many new things like spice, cows, wheat including a deadly virus which the native were not immune to, it was called the small pox. This horrid virus killed over 90% of the native population. This is one of the main reasons why the new world was considered to be a wilderness.
And in 1346 in the Sicilian port of Messina arrived a ship that brought the biggest and the most catastrophic virus that has ever struck the human kind that we know of at least The Black Death. It affected Europe, South Africa and most of Asia. It is estimated to have killed over 200 million people. It wiped 50% of Paris's population, while it was 60% in London and a whopping 80% in Florence. This deadly virus killed 40% of Europe's population. To put that into perspective the coronavirus has killed exactly 0.001% of the US population which was one of the most hard hit countries in the whole world.
Today we understand the corona virus and how it works and how to control it apparently and we have vaccines to prevent it from happening. But back then people had no idea how it worked. The best theory was that it is the cause of the petulance released by the alignment of two planets. I know this sounds nonsense but back then that was the best the science could offer. Bacteria wouldn't be discovered in another 300 years and viruses 200 years after that. So there was really no way for them to know what hit them. The fact that the black death was caused by the disease bubonic plague. The yersinia pestis bacteria was discovered in 1894.
Today we know that it was transferred from black rats to humans by the fleas, or at least that's what we believe. This theory is highly debated in the scientific community. We still have 650 deaths every year from the bubonic plague but it is quite different from the reports from the 13th century. The disease was big because of its speed. Reports say that the disease travels from one town to another in just a matter of weeks. But as the disease is spread by rats it can only travel at the speed the rat travels in. And most rats only travel 100m from where they are born in their whole lifetime. But in just a couple of years this bacteria had infected the people from China to Portugal and in-between. But let's give the rats the benefit of doubt and say this happened because of the silk road and that they traveled in ships and horse ridden carts.
Still the disease should be more gradual and sporadic just like the outbreaks in the 20th century in India but even with the addition of trains the disease didn't do much. And if it isn't rats who are infected then it should be humans who have infected others. But humans are less contagious. And the only other way is through air. But in most cases the disease isn't airborne. It only happens when the pneumonic plague, the more fatal version of the bubonic plague. But a person couldn't survive more than a few hours when it has pneumonic plague as it is highly fatal and so humans can't travel in this condition. And in some of the countries like Switzerland and Norway black rats didn't even live there back then.
In addition, it is just as fatal to rats as it was to humans. So, there should have been reports of rats dropping dead by the millions in the city. But there are no such records about the dropping dead of the rats in the city.
A theory says that it is done by another ebola like virus when no traces of the yersinia pestis was found in one of the cemeteries containing bubonic plague victims. This would be very scary as it would be a virus and antibiotics won't work. But later when tested with better equipment the traces of this bacteria was found. So this theory was ruled out pretty quick.
There is another theory that states that this could be the work of human fleas rather than rat fleas. This is a more promising theory as personal health and hygiene wasn't a big thing like it is today. The mere idea that millions of tiny things, invisible to the naked eye, could get into our body and kill us from inside if we didn't take a bath every week would be enough to execute a person. So it could work as no other animal has ever covered so much ground in such a short time as human with the addition of intercontinental travel with the help of the silk road.So it could be that rats may be he one who started it in the first place but we are the ones who continue it and take it to the height it was in.
In 2019 a group of scientists used an advanced computer model to stimulate the bubonic plague in 9 European cities during the black death and ran the models three times. Once with rat fleas being the main spreader, after that air being the main spreader to stimulate pneumonic plague after that human fleas being the main spreader and by far the last one was the best match. And this proves that body likes and human fleas were the main spreader of the bubonic plague. And this also proves that most of the things that are taught about the black death are wrong.
Reference: ‘Everything you know about the Black Death is wrong’ ;Washington Post;2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/31/everything-you-know-about-the-black-death-is-wrong-say-the-bones/
