“The laws of biology haven’t changed, but the playing field has changed dramatically,” he says. The growing human population, increasing globalization, and environmental damage are all accelerating the process, says William Karesh, an executive vice president at EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that studies zoonoses, or diseases that spread between animals and humans. “Few people realize that measles, plague, and other diseases go back thousands of years, with Neolithic origins,” he says. Many of the viruses and bacteria behind these outbreaks existed for millennia without causing widespread harm. Unauthorized use is prohibited.ĭeadly outbreaks and novel diseases have challenged human existence throughout history, profoundly impacting economics, culture, and commerce, killing world leaders and bringing down empires, says David Morens, a zoonotic disease expert at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Nevertheless, the current recorded death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 4.8 million, and experts say true numbers are far higher. This time scientists know it’s caused by a virus, and modern germ theory coupled with advanced gene sequencing mean we have the tools to study its weaknesses and curb its spread. Nearly seven centuries after the Black Plague hit Europe, yet another pandemic is raging. Scholars at the University of Paris blamed the contagion on a dangerous "triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars." Over the next five years, the Black Death swept Europe, killing 34 to 50 million people-between a third and a half of the population at the time. They and the fleas they carried were infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. Though authorities quickly ordered all people to remain onboard the “death ships,” rats had already disembarked. The few survivors were covered in oozing, black pustules. When a dozen merchant ships from the Black Sea docked in Messina, Sicily, in October 1347, they carried a deadly cargo that would change the course of history.
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