The Black Death
The bacterial pathogen carried by fleas on black rats was the cause of the Black Death?
What is Yersinia pestis?
In 1980, the World Health Organization officially declared smallpox to hold this unique title in medical history
What is the only human disease ever fully eradicated?
Despite its common nickname, the 1918 Influenza pandemic did NOT originate in this European country.
What is Spain?
During the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Red Cross volunteers performed this crucial protocol to stop up to 70% of new transmissions.
Who won the 2026 World Cup?
Up to 90% of Indigenous American populations died from smallpox and measles primarily because they lacked this key biological defense.
What is prior immunity (or antibodies)?
Unlike typical seasonal flu strains, about 50% of fatalities during the 1918 pandemic occurred in adults within this age demographic.
What is 20 to 40 years old?
This blood-borne and sexually transmitted virus, first clinically identified in 1981, has caused over 40 million deaths globally.
What is HIV (or AIDS)?
If you realize you forgot to study for a test 5 minutes before class starts, internet culture says that you are officially this.
What is "cooked"?
Originating in the 14th century, the word "quarantine" comes from the Italian term quaranta giorni, which refers to this specific number of days.
What is 40?
In 1796, English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine using material from lesions caused by this related animal virus.
During the 1918 pandemic, American Red Cross volunteers sewed and distributed hundreds of thousands of protective masks made from this material.
What is gauze?
The epidemiological term R0 (R-naught) represents this vital piece of data about a virus
What is the average number of people one infected person passes the disease to?
In 2023, the Oxford University Press named this 4-letter slang word, short for "charisma," as its Word of the Year.
What is Rizz?
The port city of Venice and the city-state of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) used quarantine primarily to inspect incoming ships traveling along this famous trade network.
What is the Silk Road (or maritime trade routes)?
Smallpox was caused by this specific virus.
The 1918 flu infected roughly this fraction of the entire world's population at the time.
What is one-third
Measures like social distancing, school closures, and mask mandates that do not involve drugs or vaccines are collectively called these.
What are non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)?
According to standard high school biology, this membrane-bound organelle is famously known in every internet meme as the "powerhouse of the cell."
What is the mitochondria?
Because the Black Death killed so many agricultural laborers, it effectively brought an end to this economic and social system in Western Europe.
What is feudalism?
Before modern vaccines, people practiced this early immunization technique of scratching actual smallpox scabs into healthy skin.
What is variolation?
Severe deaths in healthy young adults during the 1918 flu were often caused by this term for an overreaction of the immune system.
What is a cytokine storm?
Protection provided to unimmunized individuals when a high percentage of the population becomes immune to an infectious disease is known as this.
What is herd immunity?
If you start high school at age 14 and sleep the recommended 8 hours a night during your 4 years, you will spend roughly this many total months of high school completely asleep.
What is 16 months or 1.3 years?