5 ms·

Land-use changes across Europe linked to mortality during the Black Death

88 points by benbreen 5y ago

trhway 5y ago
correlating that severity impact map with the spread-vs-time it suggests that the strain may have been weakening with time (reminds covid?) https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/PlagueStats.html https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/PlagueStat...
- marklubi 5y ago
  Viruses always weaken over time. If they kill their host too quickly, they don't spread.
  - matthewmacleod 5y ago
    This is a rule-of-thumb guide to selection pressure, rather than some kind of underlying biological fact. We can trivially observe many disease-causing agents to which this doesn’t apply. And yersinia pestis is not a virus.
zackees 5y ago
Fun fact. Immigration was kept open across Europe during the plague. Poland was an exception and kept their borders closed. They were subsequently spared the ravaging death toll. “One theory was that Poland’s ruler at the time, Kazimierz the Great, effectively quarantined the whole country by banning all foreigners from crossing the kingdom’s borders, thereby restricting the movement of people who were affected.” https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/no-way-no-plague-was-poland-once-an-island-of-immunity-10943 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/no-way-no-plague-was-po...
- jb1991 5y ago
  And they say travel bans don't work! But that is a very interesting anecdote.
  - yodon 5y ago
    Travel has changed radically since the dark ages. The effectiveness of a travel ban during the dark ages is not a good guide for the effectiveness of one today.
    - jb1991 5y ago
      I guess it wasn't obvious, but I was being facetious.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > And they say travel bans don't work! No, “they” say that performative racist restrictions don’t work against epidemics. Example of a “travel ban”: closing only direct flights, only from china, only to foreign nationals, when cases are already blowing up stateside and streaming in from other non-banned countries. Example of an actual travel ban: closing travel from anywhere, to anyone, possibly aside from to local residents and nationals following extensive supervised quarantining.
    - jb1991 5y ago
      I agree with you completely. My remark was just tongue-in-cheek.
- refurb 5y ago
  Poland has a massive land border and much smaller population back then. How effective was it? I mean, plenty of people cross into the US illegally today.
  - txru 5y ago
    I'm guessing it was quite a lot easier to guess who was an outlander if they were travelling through the country. Far fewer people travelled great distances, travel required burdensome preparations, and if you wanted to bring any kind of business with you, you had to travel in some way that was manifestly obvious what you were doing.
nathias 5y ago
we really missed a chance to set up the conditions of a new renaissance
- CalRobert 5y ago
  Agreed, but the effect of Covid was much, much smaller than the black plague, if only due to much lower fatality rates.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Even without vaccines or treatments, covid wasn’t ever deadly enough to make a big difference. It seems like the mortality was between 1 in a hundred and 1 in a thousand, and at that heavily skewed towards older population.
  - jrapdx3 5y ago
    Latest numbers show the US with ~2.7 deaths/1000 cases. The global rate is higher: 14.3/1000. Just as it was 700 years ago case and death rates as reported by local authorities vary widely across locations. FWIW US confirmed case rate (cases/million) currently stands at 236000, or 24% of the population. Of course some other countries beat that by a mile: ATM among the top 30 nations (in terms of total cases) the case rate title belongs to Israel which has 370000/million, but interestingly COVID deaths are much lower at 1.04/1000.
    - buntsai 5y ago
      Numbers in the UK suggest higher death rates. There seem to have been something in the order of 150,000 excess deaths with fewer than 20 million positives (with a free and extensive testing programme). Both estimates come with caveats but this still suggest that pre Omicron strains had higher mortality rates. The key is using excess deaths statistics which seem much less subjective.
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
Mentioned in the latest blog by Brett Devereaux too, that with 60% of the population dying off in Europe, the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas - https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/ https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f... It's worth also noting the truly terrifying journal of John Clyn who basically lived through, at least some part, of the height of the Black Death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clyn
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Mentioned in the latest blog by Brett Devereaux too, that with 60% of the population dying off in Europe, the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas 30% (or rather, "something like a third"), not 60%.
  - dependsontheq 5y ago
    In general yes but you had areas with more death and the societal collapse afterwards had it's fair share in that.
    - Fricken 5y ago
      They estimate 80% of London's population was wiped out in about 2 months. In the country the impact was generally less severe.
      - throwaway6734 5y ago
        I can't begin to imagine the horror. I feel so fortunate to be alive in this time.
- vidarh 5y ago
  > the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas In Norway, the relatively common last name and place name Ødegaard translates to "abandoned farm" and while not necessarily exclusively caused by the black death it rose to prominence as people took on farms after it. It's fascinating how visible it still is in naming so many centuries later. (In the UK people might be aware of an Arsenal player with that last name, for example)
rawicki 5y ago
Parallel to this - the Orbis Spike hypothesis postulates land use changes as a result of European colonization of Americas were large enough to cause a significant climate change - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#European_colonization_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#European_coloniza...
ashwagary 5y ago
Time to rename it to the "white death"? This seems more accurate.

88 points by benbreen 5y ago

correlating that severity impact map with the spread-vs-time it suggests that the strain may have been weakening with time (reminds covid?) https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/PlagueStats.html https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/PlagueStat...

marklubi 5y ago
Viruses always weaken over time. If they kill their host too quickly, they don't spread.
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  This is a rule-of-thumb guide to selection pressure, rather than some kind of underlying biological fact. We can trivially observe many disease-causing agents to which this doesn’t apply. And yersinia pestis is not a virus.

zackees 5y ago

Fun fact. Immigration was kept open across Europe during the plague. Poland was an exception and kept their borders closed. They were subsequently spared the ravaging death toll. “One theory was that Poland’s ruler at the time, Kazimierz the Great, effectively quarantined the whole country by banning all foreigners from crossing the kingdom’s borders, thereby restricting the movement of people who were affected.” https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/no-way-no-plague-was-poland-once-an-island-of-immunity-10943 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/no-way-no-plague-was-po...

jb1991 5y ago
And they say travel bans don't work! But that is a very interesting anecdote.
- yodon 5y ago
  Travel has changed radically since the dark ages. The effectiveness of a travel ban during the dark ages is not a good guide for the effectiveness of one today.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    I guess it wasn't obvious, but I was being facetious.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > And they say travel bans don't work! No, “they” say that performative racist restrictions don’t work against epidemics. Example of a “travel ban”: closing only direct flights, only from china, only to foreign nationals, when cases are already blowing up stateside and streaming in from other non-banned countries. Example of an actual travel ban: closing travel from anywhere, to anyone, possibly aside from to local residents and nationals following extensive supervised quarantining.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    I agree with you completely. My remark was just tongue-in-cheek.
refurb 5y ago
Poland has a massive land border and much smaller population back then. How effective was it? I mean, plenty of people cross into the US illegally today.
- txru 5y ago
  I'm guessing it was quite a lot easier to guess who was an outlander if they were travelling through the country. Far fewer people travelled great distances, travel required burdensome preparations, and if you wanted to bring any kind of business with you, you had to travel in some way that was manifestly obvious what you were doing.

nathias 5y ago

we really missed a chance to set up the conditions of a new renaissance

CalRobert 5y ago
Agreed, but the effect of Covid was much, much smaller than the black plague, if only due to much lower fatality rates.
colechristensen 5y ago
Even without vaccines or treatments, covid wasn’t ever deadly enough to make a big difference. It seems like the mortality was between 1 in a hundred and 1 in a thousand, and at that heavily skewed towards older population.
- jrapdx3 5y ago
  Latest numbers show the US with ~2.7 deaths/1000 cases. The global rate is higher: 14.3/1000. Just as it was 700 years ago case and death rates as reported by local authorities vary widely across locations. FWIW US confirmed case rate (cases/million) currently stands at 236000, or 24% of the population. Of course some other countries beat that by a mile: ATM among the top 30 nations (in terms of total cases) the case rate title belongs to Israel which has 370000/million, but interestingly COVID deaths are much lower at 1.04/1000.
  - buntsai 5y ago
    Numbers in the UK suggest higher death rates. There seem to have been something in the order of 150,000 excess deaths with fewer than 20 million positives (with a free and extensive testing programme). Both estimates come with caveats but this still suggest that pre Omicron strains had higher mortality rates. The key is using excess deaths statistics which seem much less subjective.

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

Mentioned in the latest blog by Brett Devereaux too, that with 60% of the population dying off in Europe, the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas - https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/ https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f... It's worth also noting the truly terrifying journal of John Clyn who basically lived through, at least some part, of the height of the Black Death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clyn

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Mentioned in the latest blog by Brett Devereaux too, that with 60% of the population dying off in Europe, the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas 30% (or rather, "something like a third"), not 60%.
- dependsontheq 5y ago
  In general yes but you had areas with more death and the societal collapse afterwards had it's fair share in that.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    They estimate 80% of London's population was wiped out in about 2 months. In the country the impact was generally less severe.
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      I can't begin to imagine the horror. I feel so fortunate to be alive in this time.
vidarh 5y ago
> the remainder abandoned hard scrabble land and moved to better agricultural areas In Norway, the relatively common last name and place name Ødegaard translates to "abandoned farm" and while not necessarily exclusively caused by the black death it rose to prominence as people took on farms after it. It's fascinating how visible it still is in naming so many centuries later. (In the UK people might be aware of an Arsenal player with that last name, for example)

rawicki 5y ago

Parallel to this - the Orbis Spike hypothesis postulates land use changes as a result of European colonization of Americas were large enough to cause a significant climate change - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#European_colonization_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#European_coloniza...

ashwagary 5y ago

Time to rename it to the "white death"? This seems more accurate.