Comparing the Death Tolls of Historical Pandemics

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our heads around staggering statistics that happen outside of our lifetimes, or in a place far away. The COVID-19 pandemic killed an estimated 27 million people, likely including someone you know. Still, the big three pandemics in history are bigger: the Black Death of the 14th century, when communicable disease was little understood (50 million dead); the Columbian Exchange, when 90% of the New World population was killed off by European diseases they had no immunity for (48 million dead); and the Spanish Flu, which didn’t come from Spain but was fueled by international travel connected to World War I (between 50 and 100 million dead). The millions who died in those pandemics were also a bigger percentage of the world population at the time. We are lucky to live in a time when science can respond to these diseases more quickly than ever. Read more about the largest pandemics ever and how these statistics were compiled at Our World in Data. You’ll also see a larger, more readable chart there. -via Digg

Source: neatorama