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[[File:plague-of-justinian-dbe278c5-d021-4cf7-b7e6-ffa7bf3c98f-resize-750.jpeg|thumb|left|250px|Figure 1. The Justinian Plague is perhaps among the most devastating pandemics in history.]]__NOTOC__
Pandemics have long been a part of human history. This includes various diseases that spread globally and has, in many different periods, created a large-scale population reduction. For ancient periods, pandemics were often conflated with plagues. While the recent COVID-19 pandemic is of concern, many other pandemics have caused far worse social disruption and destruction.
====Recent Pandemics====
[[File:07-influenza-02-mediumSquareAt3X.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Figure 2. The Spanish Flu killed millions and was the last time the global population declined due to a pandemic.]]
Almost comparable in scale to the Black Death are the series of mostly smallpox outbreaks that occurred in the New World between 1492 and 1850s, caused by Europeans bringing the disease to Native American populations that had no built immunity to this disease. The Aztecs are a famous example of an empire collapsing mostly because of smallpox devastating the population, but nearly every Native American population, starting with the first populations that greeted Christopher Columbus and other explorers, experienced high death rates, some to the point where they had nearly 100% fatality rates. As a percentage of deaths, these outbreaks were probably the most devastating in history relative to the scale in which they occurred.<ref>For more on the smallpox outbreaks in the New World, see: Thornton, R., 1990. <i>American Indian holocaust and Survival ; a Population History Since 1492</i>, The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Okla.</ref>
