The COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 has changed too many lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has been raging worldwide for a year, but it is still going strong, infecting more than 91 million people worldwide and killing nearly 2 million as of January.

The economic losses were even greater and incalculable. The continuing pandemic triggered a widespread economic recession and dealt a blow to the already booming wave of globalization. The United States, the only superpower, has fallen in front of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic, which further aggravates the domestic political turmoil and division and exposes its economic, social and institutional vulnerability.

Historically speaking, the Black Death, smallpox and cholera were the deadliest and most terrifying super plagues in human history, killing hundreds of millions of people. These devastating infectious diseases can change the fate of a nation or even the course of human history. To date, only smallpox has been completely eradicated by humans, with only partial samples of the smallpox strain remaining in the laboratory for scientific research. Plague has occasionally spread in small scale around the world, while cholera remains a risk in areas with poor sanitation and a lack of safe water.

Of the three pandemics, the Black Death had a huge impact on Europe. The Black Death, mainly from 1348 to 1451, killed tens of millions of people and nearly halved Europe’s population. It was the worst plague pandemic in human history. At that time, it was found that those who were infected with the plague would have many black spots on their skin, and then the whole body would become black, delirium, high fever, and finally painful death, so this particular plague was called “black Death” by the Europeans.

Plague is a natural epidemic disease widely prevalent in wild rodents. Ancient China had already called it “plague” and had already carried out anti-rodent measures to effectively prevent it. In the middle Ages, Europeans were completely ignorant of the disease caused by plague bacteria, and Europe at that time could be said to be the paradise of rats. At that time, Europe had extremely poor public health conditions and people did not pay attention to hygiene. They defecated, urinated and littering everywhere in cities, providing a good living environment for rats. In addition, at that time, the Catholic Church in Europe thought absurdly extreme, that the cat is the angel of the devil, the servant of the witch, so the cat was killed. Lacking natural predators and good living conditions, rats in Europe thrived in cities. Contamination of the environment by rats and their fleas caused the spread of plague.

Later, Europe implemented the strictest quarantine system, isolating patients, villages, people and goods, and eventually, European countries have emerged from the shadow of the Black Death. People learned to control the epidemic of plague effectively through deratization, disinfection and strict isolation measures.

Europe in the Middle Ages was decimated by the Black Death. However, the black Death also completely shook the traditional social structure of Europe, weakened the power of feudal and ecclesiastical aristocrats, led to the revival of humanism and indirectly contributed to the later Renaissance and religious Reform. In the following two or three hundred years, Europe led the world trend, taking a leading position in science and technology, military affairs and economy, thus ushering in the era of global colonial expansion in the 19th century.

The infectious disease that had a profound impact on Chinese history was smallpox. Smallpox was a deadly virus, and it struck quickly. As early as the Jin Dynasty (220-2jin dynasty), the philosopher Ge Hong described the symptoms of smallpox in detail for the first time in his work “Urgent Prescription of Elbow Reserve”. Later, with the deepening of medical understanding, song and Yuan dynasties, there have been many doctors began to prevent and treat smallpox through the kind of “human pox”, “human pox” is used to blow the scab powder of the patients with pox self-healing into the nasal cavity of the inoculated, which is the most effective smallpox prevention method before the invention of “vaccinia”. By the Ming Dynasty, most adults in the Central Plains had certain immunity to tianhua, and only children had a higher incidence. Therefore, in each dynasty before Ming Dynasty, although smallpox always existed, the epidemic scale was not large, and it did not have a significant impact on the whole society and political situation.

Smallpox, however, had a major impact on the fate of the last authoritarian dynasty, the Qing. Smallpox played a decisive role in the succession and power game of the Qing Dynasty.

The Jurchen nationality lived in the northeast area outside Serbia, where the climate was cold and dry. Their lifestyle was mainly nomadic and hunting, and they had little contact with the Han people in the south, so smallpox virus was rarely spread in these areas. At the beginning of the qing army’s entry into the pass, the number of smallpox patients in the eight Banners increased with each passing day because of the increased contact with han people due to accultation with the soil and water.

Three of the twelve Emperors of the Qing dynasty died of smallpox. They were Huangtaiji and Shunzhi in the early Qing Dynasty and Tongzhi in the late Qing Dynasty. Another one that could not be ignored was the powerful “Auxiliary Prince Shu Deyu” in the early years of Shunzhi in the early Qing Dynasty.

Dodor, the brother of dourgun, the regent of the emperor’s father, also died of smallpox.

The sudden death of these three emperors and an auxiliary prince had a great impact on the political situation of the Qing Court at that time.

Huang Taiji died of smallpox a year before the Qing army entered the Pass. At that time, The disease developed rapidly and he died suddenly before he could stand up. As a result, fu Lin’s succession to the throne was an unexpected result of the power struggle. Although Fu Lin, Huangtaiji’s ninth son, succeeded to the throne, the highest power was in the hands of duergun, the regent.

In the eighth year of shunzhi, fu Lin, the fourteen-year-old Shunzhi emperor, was in power. Although he only reigned for ten years, he died of smallpox at the age of twenty-four. But it was also because of smallpox that Shunzhi came to power. Shunzhi six years, the Second person in the Qing Court, power second only to the regent Duergun “assistant Prince Shudeyu” Duduo died suddenly of smallpox. The following year, Duoergun died suddenly, opening the way for Shunzhi.

On the seventh day of the first lunar month in the 18th year of Shunzhi, emperor Shunzhi died of smallpox in the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Although he had eight sons, four of them died young (thought to have been caused by smallpox), and the eldest was the second son, who was only nine years old. Finally, eight-year-old Xuanye, the third son of the emperor, was chosen by Shunzhi as his successor, the later Kangxi Emperor. The reason for choosing him was simple: Xuanye had smallpox and was immune for life, so he did not have to worry about premature death.

In the late Qing Dynasty, emperor Tongzhi also died of smallpox at the age of 19. Tongzhi’s sudden death, although there was no power struggle, caused political turmoil, but his mother Cixi continued to hold the power of the Qing dynasty, objectively played a role in helping. As a result, smallpox had a profound impact on modern Chinese history.

Cholera, on the other hand, is a disease that is still prevalent in areas with poor sanitation. Cholera is an acute diarrheal infectious disease caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with vibrio cholerae. Cholera peaks in summer and can cause diarrhea, dehydration and death within hours. The World Health Organization estimates there are 3 million to 5 million cholera cases worldwide each year, with 100,000 to 120,000 deaths, and Africa accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s cholera cases.

There have been seven recorded cholera pandemics. In the century-plus years from 1817 to 1923, when the first cholera epidemic began, six pandemics took an incalculable toll, killing more than 38m people in India alone. The seventh cholera pandemic began in 1961. This time it started in Indonesia, then spread to other Asian countries and Europe, and in 1970 it arrived in Africa, where it has been a scourge ever since.

In the 1990s, cholera cases began to rise again. The resurgence of cholera after many years is mainly related to environmental deterioration, poor sanitation facilities, lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition and other factors in poor areas. Cholera hit Latin America in 1991, sickened 400,000 people and killed 4,000 in a single year.

As we have now begun to vaccinate against COVID-19, the spread of the Novel coronavirus virus will be brought under control, just as we have conquered other plagues. Thanks to modern medicine, the novel Coronavirus mortality rate seems to be much lower than those of these three infectious diseases, especially compared with plague and smallpox. But the Novel Coronavirus will undoubtedly go down in history as highly effective, stealthily infectious, with its wide spread and far-reaching impact on the global economy.