Plagues of Ancient and Modern Civilizations: What You Need to Know About Each, Plus the Coronavirus

Although I wasn't planning on writing on this subject, I felt the need to write due to the massive hysteria across the United States and the world for that matter about the coronavirus and other sicknesses, diseases, and plagues for that matter. Throughout the folds of history, many plagues such as Biblical Plagues, The Black Death, Polio, HIV, and AIDS have all played a significant role in our history of modern medicine, the development of vaccines, the improvement of hygiene, and overall the evolution of our immune systems as a whole. Because of this, we have had the opportunity to advance in knowledge of all subjects, plus escape many instances of extinction from these viruses. Though we have been hysteric about the Coronavirus and how it will be the next plague, let's understand why each instance of viruses and illnesses are considered plagues, plus what we as a united people can do to stop them.

Based off of the Oxford English Dictionary, a plague is any disease that spreads quickly and kills a lot of people. Based off of this definition, from the comments that I've been receiving on the Coronavirus, people have the wrong idea about the virus in the first place. Although the virus has spread rapidly and has infected 175,691 people as of today, the world fatality rate for the disease is only 6,715. Although this number is extremely horrifying for the victims of the virus (my condolences are to their loved ones), from a historical standpoint this number wouldn't even be close to a plague of any sort, thus meaning that the fuel in this fire is the media that has driven many people delirious to the point that people have bought nearly entire Walmart's stocked goods to the point where supply and demand can't keep up with each other and eventually this will ultimately hurt the economy because of media-driven madness.

Looking back at previous instances of plagues such as The Black Death for instance, between 75,000,000 and 200,000,000 people died due to the lack of medical treatment and the infestation of rats associated with the disease. Another famous plague, The Plague of Justinian, killed between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 people due to the medical treatments and lack of sanitation. However, if we were to take a modern disease, such as the AIDS/HIV epidemic of the 20th/21st century, the death count is 30,000,000. For a modern disease with the sanitation requirements for nearly any sickness, the AIDS epidemic very much shook the entire nation due to the massive death rate, but it wasn't as widespread due to this being a sexual disease. Other instances of sicknesses throughout the past 15 years such as the Swine Flu with a fatality of 18,036 were nearly moments of confusion throughout the US, mainly because of the media's lack of influence in the disease epidemics throughout the early 21st century period.

Now as opposed to other instances of plagues and diseases, people have nearly panicked over the coronavirus. Little did everyone know though, the coronavirus has actually been around since November 17th of 2019. The only reason as to why people are getting it at such a rate that they are now is because of the amount of time the virus has had to spread. I myself believe that I have already had the virus and have passed through from it due to the symptoms that I had in early January. While recently looking through the symptoms, I noticed that I had every symptom on the list for coronavirus back in January, but I got better fairly quick due to my immune system strengthening. With the media blowing the coronavirus outbreak bigger than what it initially is, from a historic viewpoint it will be seen through the numbers of fatality, not cases associated with the disease. Even the Swine Flu had over 22 million cases where people were infected, but without researching the actual case number of people infected, all that would be found is the number of deaths. As Joseph Stalin once said, "A single death is a tragedy; A million deaths is a statistic". However, the only thing that Stalin got wrong was that in historical terms that is true, but thinking modernly it is a million tragedies with a million different stories to tell.