The Coronavirus Untold Story And Fact About The Pandemics

That the novel coronavirus has reached every nation on the planet is no news, that it is claiming lives is also no news.

This is not the first time that a pandemic of this magnitude is hitting the world.

In 541CE, while the supreme power of the empire was all, Emperor Justinian, ruler of the Byzantine Empire, had just conquered Egypt and as was the practice, he was entitled to tributes from his conquered lands, so along with tributes that came to Constantinople from Egypt were black rats infested with fleas, these fleas were carriers of a deadly bacterium called Yersinia pestis, this bacterium resulted in the fatal infection otherwise known as the plague.

The Justinian Plague of 541 CE from across the Mediterranean Sea decimated Constantinople, it didn't stop there, like wildfire, it spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia leaving death in its wake.

The Justinian Plague of 541 CE killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people, at 541 CE, this was perhaps half of the world’s population. 

Medicine was not as advanced as it is today, so the people of that time had no clue how to battle the plague because they did not understand the plague, so, according to records, those who were found to have been infected were avoided, in most cases, they were removed from communities; they were usually taken out of the community by family members, who often got infected themselves.

It is believed that the plague ended because, over time, those that survived the pandemic had developed some kind of immunity against the plague.

Black Death

The bacteria responsible for the Justinian plague never really went away, because 800 years later, it resurfaced, this time it caused a pandemic that was called Black Death. It is estimated that between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death, claimed an astonishing 200 million lives in Europe.

However, they had come to have an understanding based on experience, of the method of spread of the disease though they still had no real scientific understanding of contagion, they, however, knew that it had something to do with proximity. That was why immigration officials were placed in the coastal port city of Ragusa, they were tasked to ensure that all newly arrived sailors were kept in isolation until they could prove they weren’t sick.

When the practice of Trentino was first initiated, sailors were barred from disembarking from their ships for 30 days, however, as time went on, the forced isolation was increased to 40 days a practice that was referred to as quarantino.

When the Western world adopted this practice of forced isolation, they called it "quarantine".

The Great Plague of London

For about 300 years after the Black Death pandemic, according to historical records, the plague always resurfaced in London roughly every 20 years interval. Because there was still very little known of contagion at the time, with every recurring pandemic, an estimated 20 percent of London's men, women and children were killed.

Records show that this era was the first time that deliberate effort was made by any authority to combat the spread of the Great Plague of London. It is believed that by the early 1500s, the government in England imposed laws to separate and isolate the sick from the general population. 

Under these new laws, families that had any of its members stricken by the plague had their houses marked with a bale of hay, the general public identified such homes by the pole with hay strung to it pegged outside the family house. The law also made provisions for how such an infected family member could be identified; in the event that; some necessities compelled such a member to mix with the public. By law, such a family member is compelled to carry a white pole when in public. 

Because animals were believed to carry the disease, they were killed in their hundreds of thousands, even pets like cats and dogs were not left out in this massacre.

The last of the Great Plague of London was said to have occurred in 1665, according to records, it was one of the worst; it is reported to have claimed over 100,000 Londoners in just seven months. Historical records indicate that extreme measures were taken to combat the 1665 Great London Plague. A blanket ban was placed on all public entertainment, all churches and worship centres were closed, markets and schools remained shut.

Worst hit were the victims of the pandemic. Red crosses were painted on the doors of victims, they were forcibly locked in their homes, cutting them totally out of circulation, the lucky ones were attended to by family members via small openings under their doors, through these openings they were given food and substances considered as medication at the time, no other help came their way, they unlucky ones were locked in their houses until they died and were collected and buried along with other dead people in mass graves.

The fight against any pandemic can be so crude and unfeeling because it does appear to be the only effective way to stem the spread of the disease.

During the 1665 Great Plague of London, the struggle to survive the pandemic was so strong that though the authority knew that locking victims in their houses was a wicked thing to do, they did it anyway with a plea for forgiveness from God for taking such inhuman action: “Lord have mercy upon us.” 

As crude and as wicked as the act of locking victims in their homes and carrying out mass burial for those who died from the effects of the disease, it did bring to an end recurrence of the Great Plague outbreak to an end.

Smallpox holds the record of being the pandemic that did the most damage to a race.

During the 15th century when new worlds were being discovered all over the place, new worlds like the Americas and Mexico were without Smallpox. However; when the discoverers came with their merchant ships and strange technologies, they didn’t come alone, they also came with their diseases.

Smallpox was a disease that was endemic to Europe, Asia, and Arabia, and has been for centuries, this disease was known to be so infectious and dangerous that it killed three out of ten people it infected, and those that didn't die from it did because their bodies have developed a resistance to the disease, but the disease usually left its mark on those who survived its attack, they were left with pockmarked scars. 

When smallpox finally hit the shores of the new world, the death rate from smallpox in areas where it was endemic simply paled in comparison to the devastation that smallpox wrought on natives of the New World. The indigenous folks of the new world like modern-day Mexico and the United States were not prepared for the onslaught that the disease had in store for them, this was worse because they had absolutely no natural immunity to smallpox and the death toll was in the tens of millions.

History reports that 90 to 95 per cent of the indigenous population of the Americas were wiped out over a century, for instance, Mexico’s population fell from 11 million people to one million.”

Centuries later, man has come of age, studies and research in virology have given man a thorough understanding of contagion, so towards the end of the 18th century, a British doctor named Edward Jenner while conducting an experiment on milkmaids in his farm, discovered that infecting some of them with a milder virus called cowpox seemed to impact on them, immunity to smallpox.

Dr. Edward Jenner then deliberately inoculated his gardener’s 9-year-old son with cowpox, thereafter, the young lad was exposed to the smallpox virus, and later studies showed that the 9-year-old lad was not affected by the dangerous virus. Smallpox thus became the first virus epidemic to be ended by a vaccine. 

Two centuries later, going by the announcement made by the World Health Organization in 1980, smallpox has been completely eradicated from the face of the Earth, thanks to the invention of the vaccine, a result of the research done to end the smallpox pandemic.