• Question: what is the worst epidemic that ever existed

    Asked by 262epdj29 to Rosie on 12 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      Either the 1918 Influenza (virus) pandemic, which is thought to have infected about 500 million people and killed about 200 million people in 1918 to 1920, or the black death (the plague, caused by a bacterium Yersinia pests) which is thought to have killed 30-60% of the population of Europe in the 14th century.

Comments

  • christldonnelly commented on :

    That’s a good question. It made me thing about ‘worst’. One of my sons was shocked to learn that malaria kills more people each year than Ebola was because I’d told him Ebola was a ‘worse’ disease. Ebola is worse in the sense that I’d be more likely to die if I were infected by Ebola virus than I would be if I were infected by malaria parasites.

    The absolute numbers of people killed in recent very bad epidemics, like those Rosie mentioned, are likely to be higher than very bad epidemics 1000 years ago because the world’s population is higher.

    Is ‘worst’ the epidemic the killed the highest proportion of the affected population or the one that killed the highest number of people?