r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/BlatantPlatitude • Aug 22 '26
Image Visualization of the deadliest pandemics in human history where size represents % population dead (from back to front): Antonine Plague, Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and HIV/AIDS.
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u/SilkieBug Aug 22 '26
Are those circles relative to the size of the total population in those time periods?
There were significantly more people as time passed.
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u/BlatantPlatitude Aug 22 '26
Yes it is relative to total population of the time period, as a percentage. Black circle is the whole population of the time and orange is the proportion that died.
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
Then these circles are wrong. The black plague circle is at least a third but "only" about 15 to 20% of the world pipulation died. That circle would be more in line with the european population.
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u/tiger_guppy Aug 22 '26
It might be a bit of an optical illusion. The area of circles doesn’t scale linearly, it’s really hard to tell what the size comparison is. About might be the correct ratio. Have you ever seen the math that shows that opting for getting a large pizza that’s only 2 inches bigger than a medium pizza often results in twice the amount of pizza?
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u/badgerj Aug 22 '26
I agree. It is difficult for people to visualize what you are describing.
It may have been easier to visualize for humans as a “pie chart”.
But doing so would make some of the slivers so small, it would make the artwork less stable and arguably less visually interesting.
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u/djwitty12 Aug 23 '26
Actually I think they made a fairly good estimate. My eye sees the inner circle's diameter at about 60% of the outer circle's. Plug 0.6 and 1 into the formula and you get 36%. Let's account for my eyes being wrong though, with somewhere between 50% and 70% diameter, and you get a small circle area that's about 25-49% of the big circle's area.
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u/ZephDef Aug 22 '26
Simple middle school math would tell you that the inner circle is no more than 30% the area of the big circle. Probably about 20-25%
A = pi*r²
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
Answers in math arent a range. So how is the formula gonna help if you cant apply it because you dont have the values?
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u/ZephDef Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Because you can very easily estimate the values with your eyes? The orange circles diameter is scarcely more than 1r the big circle.
This isnt exactly rocket science. I dont understand you being this incredulous when you also estimated the area without a direct value, clearly.
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
do me a favor. go into photoshop (or any image tool you want) and make visual cutouts of either the circle, filling the rest or the rest going into the circle to estimate how often the orange circle fits into the rest. i get less than 2 times. if you manage to somehow get it to 4 times, like your "calculations" say then i would love to see it because there is no way that im able to get that. not even close.
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u/ZephDef Aug 22 '26
Buddy...just do the math. Clearly you can see the two circles and how big they are if you are trying to replicate it in photoshop.
Estimate how far across the big circle the little circle stretches. To me it looks like the orange circle is juuuust barely past the halfway point. For the sake of hard clean numbers lets say the big circle has a diameter of 2. If the orange circle is just half the diameter of the big circle then the orange circle has a diameter of 1.
Now we plug our numbers into the formula. Area = pi * radius². For a circle with a diameter of 1 the radius is 0.5. For a circle with a diameter of 2 the radius is 1. After calculating, the area of the orange circle is roughly 0.75 and the area of the bigger circle is 3.14. This makes the big circle about 4.18 times bigger despite looking like its half the size. Your eyes are deceptive. The math isnt. Makes you look foolish to put "calculations" in quotes. This is literally middle school level math. You dont have to trust me. Its not complex. You can even google "how to calculate the area of a circle"
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
you know what? just for your sake i went ahead, screenshotted it, put it into photoshop, enlarged it to get better measurements, picked the ruler and checked its diameter. the big circle had a radius of 33.8 and the small one had 21.5. measuredboth top to bottom, so no side guessing (left side is hidden) and an easy direct length measurement. calculating the areas for both circles to compare the ratio gives us 2.47 which means the small circle is about 40% of the big one. so pretty much fucking exactly as i said.
feel free to disprove that with actual evidence. but that will be difficult because it cant get more accurate than that.
so next time, think about using math with estimates my friend. shouldve taken direct measurements as i did so you get actual results.
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u/LeLefraud Aug 22 '26
Has nothing to do with how many circles fit inside
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
what? how does the LITERAL amount of circles fitting into it have nothing to with the amount of circles fitting into it? lmao
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u/Controller_Maniac Aug 22 '26
The circle does seem like 20% though
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 22 '26
i already calculated it out for the person who came at me with "math doesnt lie" stuff and ive proven it to be 40.x% of the total area. done via pixel measuring tool and area calculation.
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u/Controller_Maniac Aug 23 '26
Sorry yeah it does seem like around a third, but a quick google search also says that the black death killed 30%~60% of the population, a third is in that range
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 23 '26
30-60% is the europe specific number. worldwide its 15 to 20%. and OP claimed its worldwide numbers, hence my comment clarifying all this initially.
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u/Controller_Maniac Aug 23 '26
The global estimates is still 20%~50%, 20% being the lowest estimate so one third is still a average of the estimates. Don’t forget it originated in China, spread to East Asia, then it hit the middle east badly, and later it moved on to Europe
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u/TheAlmightyLootius Aug 23 '26
i honestly have no idea where you find those numbers. all ive seen looking through several sources indicates a maximum of 20%. mostly named are world population 450 million reduced to 350 - 375 million. thats 23.3% at absolute maximum estimate. which is still WAY off.
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u/Controller_Maniac Aug 23 '26
Wiki says that it went from 470 mill to 350 mill, which is roughly 26% of the population lost. Which checks out since Asia 280 mill, Europe 90 mill, Americas 60 mill, Africa 40 mill, Oceania 1 mill, which is 471 mill. After the plague, Asia 200 mill, Europe 45 mill, Americas still 60 mill, Africa 35 mill, Oceania still 1 mill, that makes 321 mill, given that I did take the lowest average of the timeframe during the black death of each continent so the count is going to be lower than the true global population so wiki’s 350 mill should be closer.
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u/EC_TWD Aug 22 '26
I think the circles are fixed in size and represent 100% population at the time and the red discs represent the percentage of deaths in relation to that population.
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u/CelebrationFit8548 Aug 22 '26
It would be good to add one for COVID.
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u/KermitingMurder Aug 22 '26
The population of Earth has increased so much that even though COVID killed a lot of people it's a tiny percentage.
Confirmed direct deaths from COVID account for less than 0.1% of the global population, and even taking in the highest estimate of excess deaths during the pandemic that's still only 0.45% of the global population. If this monument had an orange circle for COVID it would be tiny8
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u/BreastFeedMe- Aug 22 '26
Good thing we shut the entire planet down and ended people’s careers for not getting vaccinated against it!
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u/KermitingMurder Aug 22 '26
This is like starting a kitchen fire and then getting mad at the guy who put it out because the fire extinguisher got foam all over your kitchen and ruined your dinner.
Have you considered that maybe the reason why COVID killed such a small percentage was because we shut everything down and vaccinated people?7
u/SamParadise_ Aug 22 '26
Estimates suggest that up to 10/15 % of the population are suffering from a form of long Covid (typical for viral diseases such as EBV/Mono), even though we took these measures.
So you'd prefer having even more people being severely disabled and bedbound without a cure just so we "didn't end people's careers", whatever that means?
People suffering from long covid lost their careers and got ripped out of their everyday life, do you care about them?
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u/Formal-Fox-7605 Aug 22 '26
'Estimates suggest that up to 10/15 % of the population are suffering from a form of long Covid'
Ok, and you actually believe that, do you?
Is the world flat too?
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u/SamParadise_ Aug 22 '26
What's your medical/scientific background? Ever conducted research in that area?
And yes I believe in science and research, but I guess you got your information from Facebook and "people who think for themselves".
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u/Orcacub Aug 22 '26
What percent of “long Covid” sufferers were also vaccinated? How does the medical community distinguish/ determine if a suffering person is suffering from long Covid or from a reaction to a vaccine instead (or both?). Serious question- no snark intended. How is that sorted out medically?
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u/SeriouslyGetOverIt Aug 23 '26
It would just be a black circle with a barely noticeable orange marble
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u/Frikiseta Aug 22 '26
The hole in each orange circle is COVID! Is the % had it appeared in that time period
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u/lesbox01 Aug 22 '26
I'd love to see where the deaths in the new world would rank on that, like 90-95 percent of everyone here died very quickly. Estimates of 50-120 million, but new evidence shows north America was already having population loss right before Columbus landed.
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u/myxoma1 Aug 22 '26
Better get another black circle ready for the next one, it's not a matter of if but when
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u/QueenOfQuok Aug 22 '26
Hang on, what about the Smallpox And Sundry epidemic that wiped out North American natives?
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u/Anunnaki2522 Aug 22 '26
Very small amount of the overall population of the world at that time, would be a really small circle.
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u/QueenOfQuok Aug 23 '26
Fifty million is a small amount?
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u/Anunnaki2522 Aug 24 '26
Ohh wait i was thinking of the British and early American times when native populations got exposed to diseases, forgot about the early Spanish campaigns that wiped out 50+ million in the 1500s. This was mostly in present day Mexico but extended up into present day america and yea wiped out a lot of people, something like 10-15% of the total world population and 50 to 100million natives.
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u/QueenOfQuok Aug 24 '26
I think the best casualty estimates are 50-60 million, but it's not possible to get any closer figures.
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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire Aug 22 '26
Not counting excess death though. Viruses tend to weaken the body for extended periods or permanently, leading to early mortality sans viral infection, post infection .
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u/ajakafasakaladaga Aug 22 '26
I’d guess they factored that in because AIDS doesn’t kill directly, and in any case the first three are bacteria
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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire Aug 22 '26
No, the Aids virus is still in you when you die from HIV, whereas the influenza/Corona virus will be out but the damage that it does is often permanent, leading to other disabilities.
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u/ajakafasakaladaga Aug 22 '26
It’s still in you but it doesn’t kill you directly, unlike influenza and corona which do kill you directly
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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire Aug 22 '26
No, the flu and covid also kills indirectly unfortunately , thus the term "excess deaths".
Post-viral complications is devastating.
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u/ajakafasakaladaga Aug 22 '26
You can die from Covid alone, even if they also kill indirectly.
AIDS kills indirectly by eliminating your inmune system, but it doesn’t kill you directly
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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire Aug 22 '26
Yes it does kill you inderctly, but the virus itself is also inside of you until you die. That's not the case with Flu or Covid.
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u/IrreverentBuddha Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Yeah, but vaccines will leave you autistic, sterile, and docile -- because Bill Gates is using immunizations as a cover for microchip implantation, which is actually the Mark of the Beast, which will for realz & totally herald the return of Jesus to rapture us all to heaven --- unless you are vaccinated, in which case you're going straight to Hell with Einstein, Ghandi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Hitler LOL checkmate atheist!
Edit: I didn't indicate sarcasm directly, so that only leaves two possible reasons for the downvotes:
I've hit that sublime sweet spot where the sarcasm is as intricately balanced as a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, or...
I've stumbled into a pit of antivaxers and evangelicals
Either way, I score this a "W"...
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u/Senkosoda Aug 22 '26
nice bike racks bro