Brain storm. Comparison of Black Death and the Coronavirus Disease

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Comparison of Black Death and the Coronavirus Disease
Over the past few months, people all over the globe have been living in fear and confusion. The period has been marked by very terrible events that range from wildfires in Australia to the US- Iranian threats to start combat and most remarkably the coronavirus. The disease spreads so fast and has caused so many deaths all over the world and various media outlets have been quick to compare it with the Black Death, a plague that wipes close to half of the European population the medieval ages. This essay will compare and contrast coronavirus and the Black Death assessing their social, economic, political and cultural impacts on the world.
Black Death is suspected to have originated in China and spread into the Middle East following the pilgrimage routes and eventually reached Europe through the trading routes. According to the World Health Organization (WHO np.), the first case of coronavirus was in Wuhan, China in 2019. Both diseases originated from Asia and were spread to other parts of the world by human travelers. The Back death spread into Europe through the trade routes when the European merchants traveled back home with the contagious disease. Similarly, coronavirus was spread to other parts of the world by travelers from China leading to infections of major the world cities. The disease continues to spread at a faster rate because of the availability of effective means of transport at the present compared to medieval Europe.
At present people are advised to practice social distancing to tame the spread of coronavirus. Also, those who have traveled from different places were asked to self-quarantine for fourteen days (Maragakis n.p). In the end, most countries in the world urged their citizens to stay at home. The concept of quarantine is not a new public health measure. People and animals from plague-infested places were isolated from others to stop the spread of a contagious disease. In 1347, to tame the spread of Black Death, the Italian ports turned stopped ships that they believed that came from areas affected by the plague. The travelers and their ships were forced into thirty days’ isolation which was later extended to forty days (Brought to Life n.p). The word quarantine is derived from Italian words quaranta which means forty and quarantina meaning forty days. Unlike, the present where people are requested to self-isolate themselves for fourteen days, people in medieval Europe were forced into 40 days' isolation because of Black Death.
Black Death spread and killed many people in Europe due to a lack of awareness and misinformation. The cause of the plague was not known until the mid-19th century. The Black Death was caused by Yersina pestis (bactria), which was discovered five centuries after the pandemic. The bacteria lived in mice and fleas but when transmitted to human hosts it caused Black Death. In contrast, coronavirus disease is caused by the COVID –19 virus which was discovered the same year that it infected the first person (WHO, n.p). In the 14th century, individuals thought that the Black Death was a punitive plague sent by God. They could not find a cure and therefore Europe lost almost half of its population. In 2019 and 2020 people have been killed by coronavirus disease because of a lack of the right information about the virus. Even with the right information now available through the internet and other media outlets, the disease is still killing people all over the world because no cure has been discovered. A lack of cure brings fear and confusion.
In the past, the coping mechanism for the medieval Europeans was flight from the affected areas. People abandoned their families to save their lives. The Black Death manifested itself in various forms; the pneumonic, bubonic and the septicemic plagues (Murrell n.p). The bubonic form infected the lymph nodes leading to headaches, fever and chills, general weakness, seizures and large boils on the neck and armpits. The septicemic form that infected the blood causing abdominal pains, extreme weakness diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. The pneumonic plague, on the other hand, affected the lungs with symptoms such as shortness of breath, fever, dry coughs, headaches, and overall body weakness. Most of the symptoms of the Black Death have been replicated by the coronavirus disease. The symptoms of COVID- 19 are fever, dry coughs, fatigue, breathing difficulties, sore throat, pains and aches (WHO n.p). In other instances, nausea, runny nose, and diarrhea are reported. The Black Death wa...