COVID-19 might be the most recent pandemic humankind has experienced, but, despite claiming an estimated 27 million lives so far, it's far from the deadliest in history.
The below timeline by Our World In Data charts the major pandemics that have occurred from the Middle Ages up to the current day, along with the estimated death tolls for each. The different colors used indicate the different pathogens behind the pandemics, and those marked with a triangle have unknown death tolls.
One of the world's deadliest pandemics is also one of the earliest ever recorded: the Black Death. The bubonic plague swept the globe between 1346 and 1353 and killed around half of Europe's entire population.
In the century or so between 1492 and 1600, the Columbian exchange — in which plants, animals, culture and more were transferred between the colonizers of the "Old World" and the natives of the Americas — killed roughly 48 million people, thanks to the spread of diseases like smallpox, cholera and flu, as well as slavery and war.
The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 to 1920 was even more catastrophic, with an estimated 50 to 100 million lives lost in just two years.
More recently, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which began in 1981, has killed approximately 33 million people as of 2022 — and continues to claim lives today.
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Via Our World In Data.
