Part 9: Ten Facts About The Black Plague, Polio, and The Spanish Flu

     Hello everybody and welcome back to another edition of my Fast Facts series. Today, I'll be looking at three pandemics. Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get into it!\

     The Black Plague:

1. The Black Death was only the second plague to affect the people of the Middle Ages.
2. The Black Death was thought to be caused by "pockets of bad air".
3. The disease created the foundation for the Renaissance.
4. It still exists in modern life and people can still get it. Thankfully we have a vaccination to cure it.
5. It is believed that it took Europe 150 years to recover from the devastation of the plague.
6. The plague was able to spread so quickly thanks to the help of ships.
7. Cats and rats could become infected but dogs were fine.
8. The first form of biological warfare started during this time when invaders would fling bodies infected with the disease over city walls to infect the healthy residents of the city.
9. The term "quarantine" was created during this time.
10. Fecal matter and urine were prescribed by doctors to treat the disease.

     Source(s): https://facts.net/history/historical-events/black-death-facts

     Polio:

1. Polio is a virus that affects the entire body, including muscles and nerves.
2. There are three different types of polio.
3. Up to 95% of polio cases show no symptoms. A small number of people can have symptoms such as fever, sore throat, headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, or diarrhea.
4. Only 1 in 200 infections lead to irreversible paralysis (usually of the legs).
5. The reason polio was so deadly because it could be transmitted in a plethora of different ways, such as food, water, physical contact, and infected feces. 
6. Polio can infect a person of any age but affects mostly children under the age of five. 
7. Cases have decreased by more than 99% since 1988.
8. As of 2014, three countries remain infected with polio, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
9. Around 2/5 children who contract polio die because it damages breathing muscles.
10. There is no cure for polio, only a vaccine.

     Source(s): https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-polio

     The Spanish Flu:

1. The Spanish Flu struck in three waves, both the first and the third being mild and the second being the deadliest.
2. The origins of the flu are still unknown to this day. 
3. The disease did not come from Spain as the name suggests. It was only given that name because Spain was hit hard by the flu. 
4. There were no drugs or vaccines at the time to treat the flu.
5. This strain of influenza was especially odd, claiming the lives of only young and healthy people. Children and the elderly were relatively safe. 
6. Doctors tried to make the disease seem less severe than it really was. 
7. 25 million people died in the first twenty-five weeks.
8. The disease reached almost every part of the world.
9. The exact death toll is impossible to know. Some estimates are as high as 100 million.
10. It killed more people than all of the battles of WWI combined. 

     Source(s): https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-the-deadly-1918-flu-epidemic/