Answer:
Seven thousand people died per day in Cairo. Three-quarters of Florence's residents were buried in makeshift graves in just one macabre year. One third of China evaporated before the rest of the world knew what was coming.
By the time the tornado-like destruction of the 14th-century bubonic plague finally dissipated, nearly half the people in each of the regions it touched had succumbed to a gruesome, painful death.
The Catholic Church and Jewish populations in Europe did not fare so well.
Distrust in God and the church, already in poor standing due to recent Papal scandals, grew as people realized that religion could do nothing to stop the spread of the disease and their family's suffering.
Jewish populations, meanwhile, were frequently targeted as scapegoats. In some places, they were accused of poisoning the water because their mortality rates were often significantly lower, something historians have since attributed to better hygiene. This prejudice was nothing new in Europe at the time, but intensified during the Black Death and led many Jews to flee east to Poland and Russia, where they remained in large numbers until the 20th-century.