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Acceleration of plague outbreaks in the second pandemic.

ABSTRACT: Historical records reveal the temporal patterns of a sequence of plague epidemics in London, United Kingdom, from the 14th to 17th centuries. Analysis of these records shows that later epidemics spread significantly faster ("accelerated"). Between the Black Death of 1348 and the later epidemics that culminated with the Great Plague of 1665, we estimate that the epidemic growth rate increased fourfold. Currently available data do not provide enough information to infer the mode of plague transmission in any given epidemic; nevertheless, order-of-magnitude estimates of epidemic parameters suggest that the observed slow growth rates in the 14th century are inconsistent with direct (pneumonic) transmission. We discuss the potential roles of demographic and ecological factors, such as climate change or human or rat population density, in driving the observed acceleration.

SUBMITTER: Earn DJD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7959508 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Acceleration of plague outbreaks in the second pandemic.

Earn David J D DJD Ma Junling J Poinar Hendrik H Dushoff Jonathan J Bolker Benjamin M BM

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20201019 44

Historical records reveal the temporal patterns of a sequence of plague epidemics in London, United Kingdom, from the 14th to 17th centuries. Analysis of these records shows that later epidemics spread significantly faster ("accelerated"). Between the Black Death of 1348 and the later epidemics that culminated with the Great Plague of 1665, we estimate that the epidemic growth rate increased fourfold. Currently available data do not provide enough information to infer the mode of plague transmis ...[more]

PMID: 33077604

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