Epidemics and pandemics in human history: Origins, effects and response measures

Abstract

Epidemics and pandemics are kind of the regular disasters that not only threaten human health, but also affect economy, social and politic life of many societies and civilizations. In the timeline of human history, there have long been a lot of catastrophic epidemics, rapidly spreading all over the world, leading to massive deaths and becoming horrible challenges to human existence. They included the plague of Antonine in Ancient Rome; the Justinian pandemic and ``the Black Death'' in the Medieval period; the pandemic of cholera and the Asian plague in the modern age; the 1918- 1919 flu pandemic, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the influenza pandemic in 2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019-2020. The main infectious diseases that cause pandemics in human history are plagued, smallpox, cholera and flu. By approaching the macrohistory and environmental history, the article made some overviews of epidemics and pandemics in human history from ancient ages to modern ages. Firstly, the article researches the terms ``epidemic, pandemic" and their levels. Next, the article analyzes the origins of epidemics and pandemics, the causes of their appearance, including biological factors, natural conditions and social conditions. Then, the article presents the outbreaks, spreads and impacts of some significant epidemics and pandemics in human history. Hence, the article also initially evaluates some response measures to epidemics and pandemics in history.