{"id":10469,"date":"2025-10-01T19:53:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10469"},"modified":"2025-10-01T19:53:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:53:25","slug":"what-was-the-worlds-first-known-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/10\/01\/what-was-the-worlds-first-known-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was the World\u2019s First-Known Pandemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/articles\/plague-justinian-pandemic\">History.com<\/a> The Plague of Justinian peaked in the year 542 and lasted for two centuries, contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Plague of Justinian in the sixth century was one of the worst of times. \u201cNow the disease spread over the whole world, sparing neither sex nor age nor making any distinction either in respect of rank or of any other quality; for all alike were attacked, whether they lived in luxury or in poverty,\u201d wrote the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who lived through it. \u201cIt was not possible to calculate the number of the dead, for no one could count them, nor was it possible to bury them all. Many were cast into the sea, and many lay unburied in the streets and in the houses\u2026 Whole cities were left desolate, and the plague did not cease until it had destroyed almost all the inhabitants of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Procopius, 10,000 people a day died at Constantinople during the peak of the outbreak in A.D. 542. Modern historians estimate up to a quarter-million people died in the imperial capital, while more than 10 million died throughout the Byzantine Empire. But the Plague of Justinian\u2014named after the emperor Justinian I\u2014did not stop at the empire\u2019s borders. It continued for more than 200 years in other parts of Europe, North Africa and the East, with a global death toll estimated at tens of millions.<\/p>\n<!-- <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\" cnxYQsgTBtzWu  nuB \"> cnxYQsgTBtzWu  nuB <\/a> --><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>History.com The Plague of Justinian peaked in the year 542 and lasted for two centuries, contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Plague of Justinian in the sixth century was one of the worst of times. \u201cNow the disease spread over the whole world, sparing neither sex nor age nor making any distinction [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychological-and-sociological-impact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-01-at-20.51.05.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10471,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions\/10471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}