Letter to the editor: Warm weather & plagues

It was warmer than this during the Black Plague (mortality of 30% to 75%), smallpox outbreaks (about 30%, CDC estimate), Spanish flu (675,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, CDC) and yellow fever plagues (about 3%, about the same as covid-19, WHO estimate). This must mean that the cloaks and hats shown in 14th-century art were to cool the body, not warm it.

But this is probably the warmest period since AD 900. A thousand years ago Norsemen were picking grapes in Newfoundland (Vinland). Iceland was about to enter 300 years of volcanic eruption, a well- traveled Norwegian pass would not be covered in ice for another three centuries, and Greenland was, well, green.

It will be interesting to see if the looming Icelandic eruption lasts 300 years. And Krakatoa is threating to blow!

Don Miller

Mt. Pleasant Township