With the fast spread of the coronavirus and resultant deaths, it is a cause for concern that the world health organizations (WHO) going by its definition is yet to declare it a pandemic but just a global public health emergency despite its reach to over 25 countries within a month.
While some countries still think the coronavirus outbreak is a joke, let us remind you of the top seven deadliest plagues that have hit the world and how they started just like what we see today.
- The Great Plague of Marseille
In 1720, Marseille’s deputy mayor on finding out he had picked infected passengers during a journey to the middle east on his ship, Grand Saint Antoine had his vessel quarantined but could not let go of his cargo.
That cargo led to one of Western Europe’s major outbreak of medieval plague which began in the French port city of Marseille. Plague-carrying rat and fleas spread across the city, sparking an epidemic, killing people by the thousands leaving piles of bodies in its wake.
Even the “Plague walls” that were built to contain the infection stood no chance against it. The great plague of Marseille killed more than 100,000 people and finally disappeared in 1722.
- The Great Plague of London
The city of London was home to plagues in the 16th and 17th centuries. 1665 was the year the great plague of London arose in the suburb of St Giles-in-the-Fields traveling to poor neighborhoods of the city.
The plagues spared nobody killing 8,000 people weekly. King Charles II did not wait to be told when he fled to the countryside leaving the poor as the plague’s main victims.
London’s authorities tried to contain the infected people by quarantining them in their homes, which were marked with a red cross however, husbands, wives, and children held hands in death.
In 1666, the plague finally died down after killing over 100,000 people.
- The Italian Plague of 1629-31
In 1629, when troops from the Thirty Years’ War carried an infection into the Italian city of Mantua, they dint know it was going to be the beginning of one of the most disastrous outbreaks. Whilst the plague reigned over the next two years, it struck major cities of Verona, Milan, Venice, and Florence.
Harsh measures were taken by the people to try and subside the spread even banishment, but it didn’t stop the plagues from killing over 280,000 Venetians nearly a third of Venice’s population.
- Antonine Plague
In 165 A.D, Troops returning from Near East did not know they were bringing back with them to the Roman Empire the Antonine plague. Two Roman Emperors were not spared from the plague, Lucius Verus, who died in 169, and his co-regent, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who the plague was named after died in 180.
The plague gave a nine years break after which it returned claiming 2,000 lives daily with total deaths at more than 5 million. The plague claimed as much as one-third of the population in some areas and decimated the Roman army.
- The Third Plague Pandemic
In the Chinese province of Yunnan in 1855, the Third Pandemic reared its ugly head. This plague traversed the globe over the next several decades.
By the 20th century, infected rats traveling on steamships carried it to all six inhabited continents with most devastation in China and India, while there were scattered cases from South Africa to San Francisco.
15 million people got killed by this plague before it died down in the 1950s. The third Pandemic led doctors to understand that bacillus Yersinia pestis is the cause of the bubonic plague. This was a breakthrough in laboratory science.
- The Plague of Justinian
The plague of Justinian is the first well-documented outbreak and was named after Justinian the 1ST and also was known as Saint Justinian the Great, in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was the Eastern Roman Emperor of Byzantine from 527 – 565.
The pandemic came into Europe in 541 A.D through rats from Africa on merchant ships. Justinian the Great was not spared but he managed to survive the attack. The plague hit Byzantine, the capital of Constantinople where over a third of the residents were wiped out, claiming up to 10,000 lives per day.
The plague reigned over Europe, Africa, and Asia for several years. The plague of Justina was believed to have killed much more than the 25 million people recorded.
- The Black Death
When Italian sailors returning home to Europe from the East in 1347 brought with them a virulent strain of plague, they did not know that this “Black Death” would eventually spend half a decade destroying across the continent.
Towns were wiped out, whilst the living spent most of their time burying the dead in mass graves, the people were convinced it was divine punishment for their sins. The Black Death finally subsided in the West around 1353, after it killed more than 50 million people which were more than half the population of Europe.
Modern sanitation, scientific and medical advances have had a big impact on making plagues seem less of a threat. Similarly, humans in the 21st century are a lot different than the ones who walked the Earth 700 years ago.
However, an epidemic fuelled by a plague-based bioterror weapon is a major factor that cannot be ruled out.
Senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre’s, Centre for Health Security, Amesh Adalja revealed that the Japanese Imperial Army developed and used plague as a weapon of war,launching at least one attack against the Chinese in 1940…
“The former Soviet Union had a large bioweapons program, including plague-based weapons, as did Iraq, and both North Korea and Syria are rumored to have bioweapons…the U.S. had an offensive bioweapons program until 1969, now we have some of these pathogens to develop defensive measures including vaccines and treatments. Adalja added.
The Coronavirus Is Here – China again?
A new ‘Black Death’ pandemic can occur as research shows that plague in pneumonic form could be an effective bioweapon.
One thing that stands out in all of this is that situated in Wuhan China is the only biosafety, level 4, a super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens, which includes the coronavirus……
Is this just a coincidence?
Could there be a warning before a pandemic?
Read Roots TV’s ‘Coronavirus: A Plague Foretold’
https://www.rootstv.ng/news/2020/02/corona-virus-a-plague-foretold/
