Has there been a pandemic every 100 years? Here's the truth

Hyderabad: A viral post accompanied by a graphic claims that there has been a pandemic every 100 years. It claims there was a plague in 1720, a cholera outbreak in 1820, Spanish flu in 1920, and the coronavirus in 2020.

So, what is a pandemic? WebMD quotes Dan Epstein, a spokesman for the Pan American Health Organization, as saying, "A pandemic is basically a global epidemic--an epidemic that spreads to more than one continent."

FACT CHECK

Let's see the timeline of each pandemic outbreak.

Plague (1347–1351): According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, "Black Death," a plague that swept through Europe during the 14^th century, killed anywhere between 30-50% of the population.

WHO explains that plague is "caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacterium usually found in small mammals and their fleas'.

Spanish Flu (1918): The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states, "The 1918 H1N1 flu pandemic, sometimes referred to as the "Spanish flu," killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including an estimated 675,000 people in the United States."

Corona virus (2019): According to the National Health Mission, "COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered corona virus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, tiredness, and dry cough."

The above data clearly shows that there is no pattern or a gap of 100 years between pandemics.

Pandemics, endemics, and epidemics are devastating and cause mass deaths. It is not a conspiracy theory.

Hence, the claim is false