The world is shut down with COVID fear, but modern epidemics are very modest compared to the sweeping plagues of pre-modern times. Diseases such as COVID right now, or AIDS in the recent past, are a concern to many, yet we know, in general, how exposure to such viruses can be significantly reduced.

When sweeping epidemics plagued our ancestors, they were much more deadly, and also much more terrifying because they really had no idea what caused them. In many cases, they believed they were God’s punishment for leading impure lives.

The bubonic plaques that occasionally swept Europe killed as many as 1 of every 3 people. COVID right now has killed about 1 in every 8250 Americans.

These sweeping epidemics and plagues have been recorded in many different places and times:

• 430 B.C. in Athens — possibly smallpox or typhus.
• The repeated epidemics during the Roman Empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius — probably measles and smallpox.
• The great plague of Justinian and the Black Death of Medieval Europe (the bubonic plague).
• The variety of diseases which killed off whole indigenous populations after the first encounter between the New World and Old World in 1492.
• The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world’s population at the time. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. By comparison, against a much larger world population base, the total worldwide deaths from COVID as of April 21, 2020, were about 171,000.

The plagues and epidemics of the past often wiped out entire villages, families and high percentages of the populations which were subjected to them.

By comparison, AIDS claimed 30,000 lives in America in 1991 and 28,000 in 1990; COVID will probably kill slightly more Americans by the time it has run its course. A true plague of Medieval proportions in modern America would probably claim at least 1,000 times as many lives as either COVID or AIDs.

Modern life isn’t easy. But, when disaster strikes, the odds are so much better now than they used to be.