A Comparison of Three Pandemics: Their Cause, Impact on Society, and Mortalities

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When one brings up the three diseases: Spanish flu, Black Plaque, and AIDS, what comes to mind? Is it the fact that each of them has killed millions? Or, that they each came at different periods of time on earth? I would like to compare the agents of each particular disease and portions of the world that was affected by these pandemics as well. Additionally, I would like to discuss the symptoms, cures, and potential cures for these diseases.

The Black Death started in the fourteenth century. Relative to world population, it was by far the worst plague. Roughly one-third of the earth’s inhabitants died from it. Europe in particular suffered the most, losing sixty percent of its population (Benedictow, 2005). It is supposed to have started in Asia and spread to Europe and Africa from there. The world knew much about it by the time it had run its course.

It was started by a bacterium called Yersinia Pestis (ibid). This germ inhabits fleas which in turn inhabit rodents, particularly the black rat. That leads to the impossibility of its total eradication since these pests reproduce quickly and are spread over the entire world. The Black Death could be defined as a particularly dangerous zoonotic disease or a plague.

The pandemic spread very quickly from nation to nation by boats that carried infected rats. Historians and scientists are sure that it was the fleas that spread the disease since unlike other epidemics, the infection spread during the summer months when rats could travel (ibid). Ordinarily, diseases spread most rapidly during the summer months.

Symptoms of the infection include puss filled boils, headaches, and bleeding under the skin. The most prominent of these symptoms were the buboes, the swelling of lymph nodes....

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...ay). Pandemics: avoiding the mistakes of 1918. Nature Publishing Group, 324-326. Retrieved from Academic OneFile via Gale

Benedictow, O. J. (2005, March). The black death: the greatest catastrophe ever. History Today, 55(3), 42-50.

Gould, S. J. (1978). The Terrifying Normalcy of AIDS. In L. H. Peterson, The Norton Reader (pp. 754-757). New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Norrisw, G. (2009, November). Learning from past pandemics. Risk Management, 56(9), 32.

Tuchman, B. (1978). "This Is the End of the World": The Black Death. In L. H. Peterson, The Norton Reader (pp. 779-791). ew York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Vickers, S. (2006). Staging sex myths to save Zimbabwe's girls. British Broadcasting Network.

Watanabe, T., & Kawaoka, Y. (2011, January). Pathogenesis of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus. PI o S Pathogens, 9-13. Retrieved from Academic OneFile via Gale

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