Plagues in Perspective     
   
   How does the Wuhan virus compare with infamous plagues throughout history? Some 250 thousand and counting have died. The U.S. has suffered about a quarter of the world's total. All counts are estimates. 

   Antonine Plague took 5 million lives 156 to 180 A.D. Facts are few, but a physician recorded symptoms that resemble smallpox and measles. Armies and traders returning from Asia helped begin the fall of the Roman Empire.

   Plague of Justinian, possibly the first bubonic plague, hitting in 541 A.D., killed 30 to 50 million. Our source article says it likely arrived on fleas hitching rides on rodents. Again, data is scarce, but a historian wrote that many thought the end of civilization was near.

   The Black Death was the worst ever, claiming 75 to 200 million lives. 
This bubonic plague swept Africa, Asia and killed about half of Europe between 1347 and 1352 A.D. Fleas and lice traveling on rats had bacteria that caused blackened skin.  

   New World Smallpox accounted for 25 to 55 million deaths as explorers arrived in the Western Hemisphere around 1520 A.D. They brought smallpox, measles and other viruses. Possibly 80 to 95 percent of the Native American population was wiped out within the first 100 to 150 years following 1492. 

   The Third (bubonic) Plague took 12 million mostly in China and India in 1855. By the end of the century infected rats had carried it to six continents. 
It disappeared in the 1940s. 

   The 1918 flu (through 1920) led to 50 million deaths, 675,000 in the U.S.
Some 500 million were infected, including President Woodrow Wilson. 

   The HIV/AIDS pandemic has taken more than 36 million lives since 1981.
New treatments have saved many, but millions still succumb.

   We added up the smaller estimates of these seven plagues, 233 million, and the larger guesstimates, 408 million.

       Jimmy