Been reading The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator - a bit dry but really good. The author is a historian and looks at our history with an examination of mosquito-borne pathogens. Really interesting as an invading army un-acclimated to malaria could suffer an 80% casualty rate with those remaining alive severely weakened and unable to work.
Early on in the book, this caught my eye:
The sanctuary city of Athens was crawling with over 200,000 refugees and their livestock, adding to an already overpopulated city. This overcrowding inside the fortified city walls, when combined with appalling hygiene, a shortage of resources, clean water, and supplies, was an invitation to death by disease.
Within three years, the mysterious disease had killed upwards of 100,000 people, roughly 35% of the Athenian population.
The date for this event? 430 BC
The city of Los Angeles came to mind.
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