Why was everyone not killed by the Black Death ?

Question

I got this question from my science book and i cant answer it !! Please help..

Answer 1

Even though it was spread by coughing and sneezing (like the Spanish Flu), not everybody got the virus.

In the Middle Ages, the Jews had relatively better sanitation than anybody else because their dietary and ceremonial laws promoted hand washing and the washing of pots and pans, and keeping human wastes afar from living areas. So the Jews were relatively less affected by all the plagues

Naturally, cowardly and superstitious people jumped to the conclusion that if they were 'immune' to it, they must have caused it, so there were widespread pogroms and persecutions and the plague killed many Jews indirectly that way.

In addition to this, there may have been some people that had a natural immunity to the plague, but this is only a speculation on my part which would be difficult to prove. (I'M sure not going to swallow a plague culture, just to see if I'm immune!)

Pasturella pestis (IIRC, the name of the germ that causes the plague) might not survive in cold weather, so we might have the climate to thank for allowing some Europeans to survive. The germ still exists, naturally, and there have been the occasional (thankfully) RARE outbreak since then. You might want to ask an epidemiologist for more information. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have web sites and there might be a question hot line, oslt.

Answer 2

the "Black Death" aka Bubonic plague .. a great proportion of people survived because of natural resistance to the virus -- once the buboes erupted, there was a lesser chance of mortality .. this along with other answers you have received shows that although it was wide spread and caused a number of deaths, it was not always fatal

Answer 3

Because not everyone got the virus.

Answer 4

b/c of genetic variation
some ppl had resistance to it, others immune systems were more efficient w/ the disease, etc, etc...