"By June 24 – The Black Death pandemic has reached England,[1] having probably been brought across the English Channel by fleas on rats aboard a ship from Gascony to the south coast port of Melcombe (modern-day Weymouth, Dorset);[2][3] by November it will have reached London and by 1350 will have killed one third to a half of its population."
It wasn't until the 1800s that hand washing was tied to health (Semmelweis). The 1300s would have been a filthy, filthy existence it's not a great surprise the plague spread like wildfire (past its initial vector). Basic hygiene has helped humanity massively.
> Dying of respiratory or cardiac failure is horrifying enough
That is how you die, regardless of events it's ultimately brain death due to lack of oxygen to the brain - pray your heart stops one day (everything else is worse).
> Dying of respiratory or cardiac failure is horrifying enough
I know you were making a reference to c19. Yes, being kept in solitary confinement while you suffocate to death by order of the state would be a miserable way to go (tax extracted and left in an "exit room").
Here in NZ the state forced an elderly man to watch from the roadside as his wife was buried but politicians were allowed to go swimming during the same lock down... Disgusting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1348
Dying of respiratory or cardiac failure is horrifying enough, I just hope we never experience something like the plague on a large scale again.