In the century that passed since 1918, humankind became ever more vulnerable to epidemics, due to a combination of growing populations and better transport. More than the First World War killed in four years of brutal fighting. Altogether the pandemic killed tens of millions of people – and perhaps as high as 100 million – in less than a year. It is estimated that the flu killed 5% of the population of India. It infected half a billion people – more than a quarter of the human species. In 1918 a particularly virulent strain of flu managed to spread within a few months to the remotest corners of the world. Yet by December a smallpox epidemic devastated the whole of Central America, killing according to some estimates up to a third of its population. At the time, Central America had no trains, buses or even donkeys. In March 1520, a single smallpox carrier – Francisco de Eguía – landed in Mexico. The city of Florence lost 50,000 of its 100,000 inhabitants. It killed between 75 million and 200 million people – more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia. In the 14th century there were no airplanes and cruise ships, and yet the Black Death spread from East Asia to Western Europe in little more than a decade. Epidemics killed millions of people long before the current age of globalization.
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