Once bustling streets are now empty of people and vehicles. Cities that never slept are now as silent as the grave.

Families huddle in their homes, terrified of the silent killer that creeps through the neighbourhood. Man, woman, child; it seems like no one is safe.

Sounds quite a bit like the world that you live in today? Perhaps so, but to be fair, humanity has long dealt with deadly outbreaks of disease throughout history.

While humanity has always been able to bounce back, the amount of human suffering and loss incurred each time has been immense.

One of the most infamous and deadliest epidemics that humanity has ever seen took place during the Middle Ages, from 1347 to 1351, caused by a disease known as the Black Death or the Great Plague.

By the time the Black Death had ended its grip on the world, 200 million people had died and Europe’s population would take 200 years to recover.

It was caused by the bacteria named Yersinia pestis, found in the fleas that infested rats. Contact with these flea-ridden rats allowed the plague to infect human populations with devastating results.

Disturbingly, the Black Death was not and would not be the only instance of plague outbreak, as the oldest recorded outbreak, the Plague of Justinian, took place in the 6th century.

One of the most recent outbreaks took place in China and India during the early 20th century, killing tens of millions.

One similarity that all these plagues had, was the role of international trade had in furthering the reach of the disease.

As more isolated communities became part of an economic network, goods and people started to be transported more often; and where those went, disease followed.

Just to emphasise how devastating plagues could be, take the Plague of Justinian. It is estimated that nearly half of Europe’s population at the time was wiped out by it.

Another reason as to how plagues could be so deadly was due to the increasing levels of urbanisation.

As a booming economy led to more people living in cities, these cities became so overpopulated. Sanitation left much to be desired, making them perfect ground zeroes for diseases to spread like wildfire.

It didn’t help back then that sanitation technology and waste management were close to being primitive, with the streets literally acting as the sewage system.

The plague originated from Asia, travelling to Europe through trade routes after killing millions in China and the Middle East.

Once it reached Europe, the death toll became catastrophic as it killed between 30 to 60% of Europe’s population.

The Black Death’s physical symptoms were horrifying, with victims looking like swollen and decaying corpses covered in gangrenous patches.

Plagues also can come in multiple forms, such as the pneumonic plague which could kill within a week but had a lesser lethality rate.

And then there was the septicemic plague, which infected the bloodstream, and always killed its victims within hours of the first symptoms, and sometimes even before those symptoms emerged.

The bubonic plague, however, is possibly the worst of the lot, as it caused a slow, painful death that took days or weeks.

Only one-third of its victims survived and even then, the survivors’ internal organs and immune system were damaged for the rest of their lives.

As this was taking place centuries before the conception of germ theory, the cause of the plague was quite a mystery to people at the time.

Searching for answers, people blamed the plague on everything, from human sin, divine punishment, bad air and poisoned water.

Racism also reared its ugly head as it does occasionally nowadays, with Spaniards blaming the Arabs for supposedly poisoning their wells.

Anti-Semites blamed the Jews for the plague and sometimes outright massacred them, horrifying more level-headed public figures.

Pope Clement VI argued that the plague was killing Jews and Christians alike and it made no sense that the Jews would poison themselves.

The remedies back then to cure the plague were also tragically hopeless. Treatments included whipping one’s self, eating arsenic, consuming crushed emeralds and sitting in sewers to drive away the plague fever.

This lack of understanding led to plague outbreaks spreading across the globe, into every continent except Antarctica, making the plague history’s most widespread pandemic.

However, in 1894, a nail in the coffin of the plague was discovered when scientists finally discovered its true cause and how to defeat it.

With developments in medical and health sciences, safety standards and urban planning, the plague has become a thing of the past.

Plague outbreaks still happen in isolated communities from time to time, but are no longer a death sentence with the availability of modern medicine.

While the plague did indeed cause no small amount of suffering, in its cruelty, it gave humanity incentive to fight it through science and progress.

Hopefully, one day, like the Black Death, Covid-19 will become nothing more than a footnote in history books.