How are modern pandemics different from the pandemics of the past?

Answer 1

I was really interested when I read this question as I had been researching this myself. The main pandemics in history have included:

• Plague of Justinian, around 100 million died in Europe between 541 to 542

• Black Death, between 50 to 200 million died of this between 1331 to 1353

The recent COVID-19 Coronavirus has me concentrating on more recent pandemics, I wondered how does this compare? I found this infographic very useful for modern pandemics, this states that the pandemics of the last century were:

• Spanish flu – which killed 17 million around 1918 to 1920

• Asian flu – which killed 1.1 million around 1956 to 1958

• Hong Kong flu – this killed around 1 million between 1968 to 1969

• HIV / AIDS – this has killed 32 million people so far

• Swine Flu – this killed around 575,000 people between 2009 to 2010

Answer 2

Pandemics themselves have not changed. What has changed is the human response to them and the knowledge and technology available to deal with the effects of them.