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How Did People in the 14th Century Understand the “Black Death”, and how does this compare and contrast to how we understand the COVID-19 Pandemic in our time?
Answers
Explanation:
In recent weeks, as the world has grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, pieces comparing it to the Black Death have spread rapidly online. Why this gravitation towards a centuries-old pandemic, when we have many more recent examples in the late twentieth century alone? Dr. Throop’s students suspect that people are turning towards the Black Death primarily because it is such a widely recognized historical pandemic. Most people will have heard a reference to the Black Death in a history class, movie, video game, or tv show. The very words “the Black Death” may seem to accurately communicate the fear and grief that many are feeling now.
So, are these two pandemics actually comparable? Certainly there are similarities. Above all, both outbreaks of disease have met the parameters to be considered a pandemic: a novel organism that is highly contagious and infectious, geographically widespread and fast-moving, with minimal population immunity. [1] In both cases, contributing factors include active global connections between human societies, climatic and environmental changes, and human pursuit of resources from the natural world. [2] During both pandemics, people learned about the disease during and after its spread, and as a result of feelings of desperation, many sought easy answers and solutions. In particular, many sought a group of people who could be scapegoated, drawing upon existing prejudices to do so. Similarly, in both pandemics, the impact of the disease was heavily influenced by existing socio-economic differences and inequities. And both then and now, some individuals and communities went to extraordinary lengths to help each other.
Explanation:
The Black Death was the second pandemic of the bacterium Y. pestis (“plague”) in the eastern hemisphere, i.e. Afro-Eurasia. Known in its time simply as the “pestilence,” or “mortality,” the pandemic was first described as “the Black Death” in the eighteenth century; the phrase sometimes refers to the full pandemic, and sometimes only to its earliest years. The initial phase of the pandemic took place in the mid-fourteenth century, with recurring outbreaks for centuries afterwards. Indeed, the four centuries from approximately 1350-1750 CE are known to scholars simply as the Second Plague Pandemic. Due to its chronological and geographical range as well as its mortality rates, the Black Death is recognized as the largest pandemic in human history.