WI:Spanish Flu instead of the Plague in Medieval times?

The Influenza epidemic of 1918, or Spanish Flu, killed as many people in two years as the Bubonic Plague, or Black Death did in centuries during Medieval times, and this despite the vastly improved medicine and sanitary conditions.

WI the Influenza, rather than the Black Death, had struck during Medieval times?
 
The Influenza epidemic of 1918, or Spanish Flu, killed as many people in two years as the Bubonic Plague, or Black Death did in centuries during Medieval times, and this despite the vastly improved medicine and sanitary conditions.

WI the Influenza, rather than the Black Death, had struck during Medieval times?

Its percentages killed, not raw numbers killed, that matter.
 
And while that was a particularly deadly influenza, untreated plague would have a considerably higher mortality rate. An infection of the pneumonic variety was really not survivable with the level of treatment available (ie. none). It would have been especially bad since the bacteria is thought to have been considerably more virulent, so virulent in fact that becoming less deadly would be advantageous for the pathogen itself!

That aside, the deadliness of the flu would depend in large part upon whether or not the population it struck had any experience with influenza type viruses. I have no idea how it would have effected medeival Europeans but the worst case scenario would have been the sort of effect seen in Eskimos with the 1918 flu, which was supposedly as high as 70%.
 
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Septicemic was the worst form of the plague. Even now with early antibiotic treatment it has a decent mortality rate. Without treatment it's pretty much always fatal.
From infection to death could take less then 24 hours, which is what kept it from wiping out the human race. It could kill you before symptoms even had a chance to develop. We travelled too slowly back then to really spread it around much and even now it kills too quickly to pose a threat of pandemic.
Too successful for its own good.

The flu really doesn't measure up.
 
One reason the flu spread so widely (and is a threat today) is the speed of transportation even in 1917. Unlike plague, which has a reservoir and transmission agents in fleas on rats & other rodents, flu requires person to person contact. The "animal" part of flu is from virus mixing of human/animal flu types in birds, pigs, etc. Once a new virulent strain is created transmission is entirely person to person, and the virus has a very short life span once released in to the environment via cough/sneeze.

If you look at the spread of the plague, you'll see how long it took to move across Europe from east to west. Given the relatively small numder of travelers and the speed of transportation (and relative isolation of many spots) during the times of the plague a disease with the transmission specifics of the flu, even if equally fatal, just won't produce the same results. One of the reasons the flu was so effective, in addition to its genetics, was the movement of large numbers of folks all over due to the war, the crowding and poor sanitation etc compared to peacetime early 20th century.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Not just transmission, but the Spanish flu needed specific circumstances to emerge. Such as super unsanitary conditions with lots of young men in it. Maybe make some sort of awful siege, involving massive numbers? Maybe a Turkish siege of Constantinople happen earlier?
 
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