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It's easy to assume infectious diseases in the past would have catastrophic results. Yet, we used every type of data set we could get our hands on, without assuming a disease outbreak must result in catastrophic results, i.e. that tens of millions died. We found no evidence in any of these data sets to suggest such a destructive outcome, this paper was only possible by working with a diverse disciplinary team, and we hope our work will start a new collaborative discussion of the impact of past disease outbreaks.