While maybe not the worst plague ever ... (?)

From R.S. Bray, Armies of Pesitlence, Barnes & Noble Books, 1996, ISBN 0-7607-1915-2:

The pandemic of influenza which struck the world in 1918-19:

… an attack rate of about 40-50% of the population and a death rate of between 0.5 and 1.2% of cases
… killed about 22,000,000 people world-wide.
… the USA suffered a mortality of about 0.5% of its population, that is about 500,000.
… the UK lost about 200,000
…Samoa, wihtout previous experience of the disease, lost 25% of its population
… Influenza wiped out whole Esquimo (sic) villages.
… India … lost 12,000,000
In confined communities such as aboard ship passenger liners bound for Australia from the UK there was an attack rate of anything from 4% ro 43%. Attack rates could also be higher for the younger age groups as they were unprotected by previous experience of the disease.

Then there's plague, malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus, cholera, ... polio ... and aids. No shortage of song material, but the "bugs" seem to be holding their own. With the exception of smallpox(??) they all still cause far too many deaths.

John