Visualizing the History of Pandemics
2020
This infographic from the Visual Capitalist depicts a visual history of pandemics, from the Antonine Plague to the current COVID-19 pandemic. It illustrates the impact of the marked shift to agrarian communities, widespread trade, and urbanization on infectious disease spread - both scale and scope.
In addition to providing historical context to the COVID-19 epidemic, educators can use this visualization to have students explore the impact of quarantine which began in the 14th century (aimed at protecting coastal cities from epidemics) and improved health care, which lowered case fatality rates associated with epidemics.
There is also a visualization depicting R0, pronounced “R naught”, which represents the number of susceptible people, on average, each infected person will in turn infect.
Visualizing the History of Pandemics
Source:
Visualizing the History of Pandemics. Visual Capitalist 2020; Mar 14. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest.