The answer to this is by and large – NO! However in some aspects there are similarities…
Pandemic
Like the Black Death it is a pandemic that has spread across the world. In the Black Death, it was spread from the Far East via the well-trodden trade routes – the Silk Road – to Europe. Today we have globalism and international air travel. Both can also spread by people running away to avoid it.
Blame
During the Black Death people had no idea what was causing it and came up with a multitude of explanations. Here are a few…
- God’s punishment for the sins of mankind – leading to endless prayers and the Flagellants.
- Minority groups were blamed for poisoning wells even though they themselves were dying… e.g. the Jews in Europe in the 14th century were murdered in their hundreds, and in the 17thcentury it varied from bad air to planetary alignment to dogs and cats!
- Foul air – The atrocious smell of medieval/early modern towns and cities gave rise to ideas that masking the smell protected you – e.g. the Plague Doctor’s mask which would have had herbs/flowers in the beak and the Plague nursery rhyme featuring “a pocketful of posies”.
At least today we have the full weight of science/medicine to offer explanations and treatment.
A one-off event?
Hopefully COVID-19 will prove to be a one-off once treatment/vaccines are fully developed. As the following list shows however, the Black Death/Plague and other pandemics are nothing new for mankind to deal with and were frequently endemic (they kept coming back with some years worse than others).
- 430BC – Athens
- 165CE – Antonine Plague
- 250CE – Cyprian Plague
- 541CE – Justinian Plague
- 11th century – leprosy
- 1347CE – Black Death
- 1492 CE – Columbian Exchange
- 1665 CE – Great Plague
- 1817 CE – Cholera
- 1855 CE – Plague
- 1875 CE – Measles
- 1889 CE – Russian Flu
- 1918 CE – Spanish Flu
- 1957 CE – Asian Flu
- 1981 CE – HIV/AIDS
- 2003 CE – SARS
- 2009 CE – Swine Flu
- 2013 CE – Ebola
- 2020 CE – COVID 19
To put this in perspective the Plague of Justinian in 541 CE accounted for approximately 25 million deaths – half the population of Europe!
Actual cause
The whole of the world’s scientific and medicine community are of course currently working on this for us but in the past they didn’t really exist and it has only been relatively recently that we now understand that the Black Death/Plague was caused by a bacterium. COVID-19 is caused by a virus.
There were also three types of Plague…
Bubonic – the most common and caused by fleas from rats biting a human. This results in swollen lymph nodes (buboes – about the size of a tennis ball) in the groin, armpit or neck. Death within 3 – 5 days. Fatality rate – 80%.
Pneumonic – caused by the flea bite infecting the lungs and making sufferers cough and spreading the disease from human to human. Death within 2 -4 days. Fatality rate – 90/95%.
Septicaemic – which was the rarest form. Caused by the infection directly entering the bloodstream. Death within 24-36 hours. Fatality rate 100%.
Quarantine?
Lockdown, curfew or quarantine for us is something new, but is in fact at least nearly 700 years old. When the Plague struck the city of Milan in 1374, the authorities ordered all sick persons to leave the city “and take to the open country, living either in huts or in the woods until they died or recovered.”
However the city of Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik) in 1377 became the first city in the world to develop and implement what we would call quarantine – effectively no one allowed in or out. The success of this practice led cities like Milan and Venice to copy it – thus giving us the word quarantine (meaning 40 days).
What have we learnt?
However bad or deadly COVID-19 is or gets, we can at least realise it is nothing particularly new for mankind and that at least today we don’t have to rely on ineffective explanations or supposed cures. Instead we have the scientific community and the heroic nurses and doctors to look after us.