From The Mind of Merc - Pandemics

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics ad occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about pandemics (inevitable, really).

A lot of people have been highlighting the theory about a pattern emerging in major plagues that seem to strike around every 100 years:

Year	Occurrence
1720	Plague
1820	Cholera
1920	Spanish Flu
2020	Coronavirus

Two things to note from this:

1)   They (sadly) are not the only plagues to strike – if you want to really depress yourself visit the Wikipedia epidemics page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

2)   On a brighter note, we are able to improve our response to it

The death toll from each of these plagues reads thus:

Year	Occurrence	Death Toll
1720	Plague	c. 1,000,000
1820	Cholera	c. 1,000,000
1920	Spanish Flu	c. 17,000,000
2020	Coronavirus	c. 40,000*

So (with the exception of the Spanish Flu) the mortality rate is improving against pandemics and contagions – especially when you consider the ones that don’t ‘fit the pattern’

Year	Plague	Death Toll	Average per year
541-542	Plague of Justinian	c. 25,000,000	12,500
1347-1351	The Black Death	c.25,000,000	5,000
1855-1960	Third Plague Pandemic	c. 22,000,000	209.5
1960-2000	All reported plagues	52	1.3

Also:

- Smallpox (which killed 500 million in the last 100 years of its existence) was eradicated in 1977

- Polio cases decreased from 49,293 to 74 between 1975 & 2015 (eradicated in Europe in 1998)

- Malaria mortality fell by 60% between 2000 & 2015 (38 countries so far declared Malaria-free)

- Rubella cases dropped from 670,000 in 2000 to 15,000 in 2018 (Australia eradicated it in 2018)

I sincerely hope there will not be another repeat in 2120 but if there is hopefully we’ll again improve our fight against it.

*While admittedly the full toll of the current outbreak is not yet known, so long as people start using common sense rather than selfishness this should start stabilising - i.e. not increasing soon

That's Cholera - Horrific Histories

Another of the first of the parody songs I penned and submitted to Horrible Histories.
Not quite as romantic as the Dean Martin original.

That's Amore Cholera not by Dean Martin

(In London Town where filth is king
When germ meets man here's what they sing)

When you’re in poverty and have no lavatory
You’re in danger
If you drank the water when you shouldn’t oughta
You could catch it
Skin will ting gle-ling-a-ling, ting-gle-ling-a-ling
And you'll know when it’s started

Symptoms run on-and-on-and-on, on-and-on-and-on
And you’ll soon be departed

When your skin’s turning blue and you’ve got fishy poo
That's cholera
When you’re constantly sick and your hands wrinkle quick
Cholera
You’ll feel life slip away and not see another day

Poor fella
Please sit down, and don’t frown, but in old London Town
That's cholera

Oh in eighteen four eight you won’t avoid the fate
Of cholera
It’ll kill many more and there’s much left in store
For cholera
Hear me sing of this horrid thing, yes for you I sing
And you'll know of cholera
Caught on slow but now we know oh yes we know
How to deal with cholera

Nowadays we’re aware of hygiene to take care
For cholera
Yes we know to hydrate before it is too late

Cholera
There are vaccines in place to preserve the human race

From cholera
It’s still hanging round, but less deaths are now found
From cholera

Getting betta