Pandemics

165 CE – 202564 items

disastermedicine
Emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Photograph from the Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Photograph from the Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two thousand years of pandemics

From the Antonine Plague of 165 to the end of COVID-19’s global emergency in May 2023. For most of that span nobody knew what was killing them: the plague bacterium was found in 1894, the influenza virus in 1933, HIV in 1983. The genome of the virus behind COVID-19 was public within two weeks of the first official report.

How it is built

Each pandemic is a band: three plague pandemics, the seven cholera pandemics, the influenza pandemics of 1889, 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009, HIV, SARS and COVID-19. Events mark where each was first recorded and the discoveries that explained it. The map runs from Pelusium and Caffa to Jessore, Yunnan, Kinshasa and Wuhan.

Every death toll names a source and gives the range the sources give. The old ones are estimates built on thin evidence, and even the recent ones differ by millions: the COVID-19 deaths reported to WHO are about half of WHO’s own estimate of the excess deaths. Dates are Gregorian, and before 1500 they are given only to the year or the month.

Threads to follow

  • plague: Justinian, the Black Death, the third pandemic

  • cholera: seven pandemics out of the Ganges delta

  • influenza: 1889, 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009

  • hiv: from Kinshasa around 1920 to combination therapy

  • coronavirus: SARS in 2003 and COVID-19

  • science: how each cause was found, from Fracastoro on

  • colonialism: the epidemics that travelled with empires

Within two hundred and fifty yards of the spot where Cambridge Street joins Broad Street, there were upwards of five hundred fatal attacks of cholera in ten days. — John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, 1855

Items

  1. Antonine Plague

    ≈ 15 years · Seleucia on the Tigris

  2. Plague of Cyprian

    ≈ 13 years · Carthage

  3. ≈ 278 years

  4. First plague pandemic

    ≈ 209 years

  5. The Plague of Justinian

    8 years

  6. Plague appears at Pelusium

    Pelusium (Tell el-Farama), Egypt

  7. Plague in Constantinople

    Constantinople

  8. ≈ 587 years

  9. Deaths from “pestilence” in the Chüy Valley

    Kara-Djigach and Burana cemeteries, Chüy Valley, Kyrgyzstan

  10. The Black Death

    ≈ 7 years

  11. The siege of Caffa

    Caffa (Feodosia), Crimea

  12. Genoese galleys bring plague to Messina

    Harbour of Messina, Sicily

  13. Boccaccio’s Florence

    Florence

  14. Ragusa orders thirty days’ isolation

    Ragusa (Dubrovnik)

  15. Epidemics in the Americas after 1492

    ≈ 108 years

  16. Smallpox reaches Hispaniola

    Hispaniola

  17. Smallpox in Tenochtitlan

    Tenochtitlan (Mexico City)

  18. Cocoliztli in Mexico

    ≈ 3 years · Teposcolula-Yucundaa, Oaxaca

  19. Fracastoro’s seeds of contagion

  20. The Great Plague of London

    ≈ 1 year · City of London

  21. ≈ 150 years

  22. First cholera pandemic

    ≈ 7 years · Jessore, Bengal

  23. Second cholera pandemic

    ≈ 11 years

  24. Third cholera pandemic

    14 years

  25. The Broad Street pump handle is removed

    Broad Street pump, Soho, London

  26. Third plague pandemic

    ≈ 105 years · Yunnan

  27. Fourth cholera pandemic

    12 years

  28. Fifth cholera pandemic

    ≈ 15 years

  29. Koch identifies the cholera bacterium

    Calcutta

  30. Russian flu

    ≈ 1 year

  31. Cholera in Hamburg

    Hamburg

  32. Yersin finds the plague bacillus in Hong Kong

    Victoria, Hong Kong Island

  33. Plague reaches Bombay

    Mandvi, Bombay

  34. Simond shows that rat fleas spread plague

    Karachi

  35. Sixth cholera pandemic

    ≈ 24 years

  36. The Manchurian plague

    ≈ 6 months · Harbin, Manchuria

  37. “Purulent bronchitis” at Étaples

    British base camp, Étaples

  38. The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic

    ≈ 2 years, 3 months

  39. Influenza at Camp Funston

    Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas

  40. Spain’s uncensored press gives the flu a name

    Madrid

  41. Philadelphia’s Liberty Loan parade

    Broad Street, Philadelphia

  42. The Talune docks at Apia

    Apia harbour, Samoa

  43. HIV begins to spread from Kinshasa

    Kinshasa, then Léopoldville

  44. Influenza is shown to be a virus

  45. The 1957–1958 influenza pandemic

    ≈ 1 year, 4 months

  46. Seventh cholera pandemic

    64 years · Sulawesi, Indonesia

  47. The 1968–1969 influenza pandemic

    11 months, 21 days · Hong Kong

  48. The last natural case of smallpox

    Merca (Marka), Somalia

  49. The HIV/AIDS pandemic

    44 years

  50. The first report of what became AIDS

    Los Angeles

  51. HIV is isolated at the Institut Pasteur

    Institut Pasteur, Paris

  52. The first drug against HIV

  53. Combination therapy at the Vancouver AIDS conference

    Vancouver Convention Centre

  54. SARS

    ≈ 8 months · Foshan, Guangdong

  55. A doctor from Guangdong checks into the Metropole

    Metropole Hotel, Waterloo Road, Kowloon

  56. The genome of the 1918 influenza virus is completed

  57. The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic

    ≈ 1 year, 4 months · La Gloria, Veracruz

  58. WHO declares the first pandemic in 41 years

    World Health Organization, Geneva

  59. Cholera comes to Haiti

    Meille, near Mirebalais, Haiti

  60. Ancient DNA confirms the plague of Justinian

  61. COVID-19

    ≈ 3 years, 4 months

  62. A cluster of pneumonia is reported in Wuhan

    Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, Wuhan

  63. The virus genome is published

  64. WHO declares a public health emergency

    World Health Organization, Geneva

  65. WHO calls it a pandemic

    World Health Organization, Geneva

  66. The first vaccination outside a trial

    University Hospital, Coventry

  67. The global emergency ends

    World Health Organization, Geneva