The plague in Athens vs. COVID-19

Today our assignment was to compare the plague that hit Athens to COVID-19. The main difference that I first think of is that the plague in Athens was not a pandemic like COVID-19 is. A second difference is that the plague in Athens lasted for 4 years, hopefully there is a difference here and COVID-19 will not last that long. A third difference is that the plague came from Africa and COVID-19 comes from China. Another thing that I hope to be a difference is the fact that the plague killed 1/3 of the population, and I hope that COVID-19 does not kill that many people. As a last difference the plague does not seem like something many people survived, while coronavirus many people will survive and recover quickly. A similarity of the two diseases are the symptoms. According to the internet the symptoms of coronavirus are:
-cough
-fever
-tiredness
-difficulty breathing (severe cases)
According to Thucydides the symptoms of the plague in Athens were:
"Violent heats in the head; redness and inflammation of the eyes; throat and tongue quickly suffused with blood; breath became unnatural and fetid; sneezing and hoarseness; violent cough’ vomiting; retching; violent convulsions; the body externally not so hot to the touch, nor yet pale; a livid color inkling to red; breaking out in pustules and ulcers." (2.49-2.50)
The plague in Athens seemed to have worse symptoms according to the way Thucydides described it, but they do seem to have similar symptoms like cough and difficulty breathing. 

Comments

  1. Great work, Nora! Good research, and interesting observations.

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