12-24-2020, 09:42 PM
The U.S. has had worse years.
https://www.axios.com/the-coronavirus-pa...4fd2f.html
In 1918 the U.S. lost tens of thousands of people in the trenches of World War I and hundreds of thousands more in the Spanish flu pandemic.
Deaths that year rose an astounding 46% from 1917, and life expectancy dropped by nearly 12 years, compared to a likely three-year decline in 2020.
Go back further and widen your lens, and far more terrible years begin to crop up.
Take 1816, known as the "Year Without a Summer" thanks to a massive volcanic eruption in 1815 that spread sun-blocking ash throughout the atmosphere. Average global temperatures fell and crops failed, leading to what one historian called "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world."
Or 1349, perhaps the worst year of the Black Death pandemic, which would eventually kill a third or more of Europe's population alone, equivalent to at least 247 million deaths today.
And don't forget 536, which the journal Science memorably called "the worst year to be alive." A volcanic eruption in Iceland early that year cast Europe and parts of the Middle East and Asia into a literal dark age, intensifying famines and hastening the spread of bubonic plague.
Be smart: What those anni horribili have in common is that they concentrated the two conditions that have been the default state of most of humanity until fairly recently: disease and starvation.
For all but a tiny elite, humanity until the 20th century was caught in a Malthusian trap, with any opportunity for significant population growth or material improvement constrained by limited agricultural productivity.
https://www.axios.com/the-coronavirus-pa...4fd2f.html
In 1918 the U.S. lost tens of thousands of people in the trenches of World War I and hundreds of thousands more in the Spanish flu pandemic.
Deaths that year rose an astounding 46% from 1917, and life expectancy dropped by nearly 12 years, compared to a likely three-year decline in 2020.
Go back further and widen your lens, and far more terrible years begin to crop up.
Take 1816, known as the "Year Without a Summer" thanks to a massive volcanic eruption in 1815 that spread sun-blocking ash throughout the atmosphere. Average global temperatures fell and crops failed, leading to what one historian called "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world."
Or 1349, perhaps the worst year of the Black Death pandemic, which would eventually kill a third or more of Europe's population alone, equivalent to at least 247 million deaths today.
And don't forget 536, which the journal Science memorably called "the worst year to be alive." A volcanic eruption in Iceland early that year cast Europe and parts of the Middle East and Asia into a literal dark age, intensifying famines and hastening the spread of bubonic plague.
Be smart: What those anni horribili have in common is that they concentrated the two conditions that have been the default state of most of humanity until fairly recently: disease and starvation.
For all but a tiny elite, humanity until the 20th century was caught in a Malthusian trap, with any opportunity for significant population growth or material improvement constrained by limited agricultural productivity.