1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic immune to the fever. Many of the slaves in Charleston in 1742 could have gained immunity before having been transported from Africa, by having been exposed to yellow fever in a mild case. People who survived one attack gained immunity. A total of 240 blacks died, in proportion to their population at the same rate as whites. Given the limited resources and knowledge of the times, the city's response was credible. The medical community did not know the natural history of yellow fever, a viral infection spread by the "Aedes aegypti" mosquito. Efforts to clean the city did not defeat
Yellow fever viruses. The main vector ("A. aegypti") also occurs in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, the Pacific, and Australia, but yellow fever has never occurred there, until jet travel introduced 11 cases from the 2016 Angola and DR Congo yellow fever outbreak in Africa. Proposed explanations include: But none is considered satisfactory. Another proposal is the absence of a slave trade to Asia on the scale of that to the Americas. The trans-Atlantic slave trade probably introduced yellow fever into the Western Hemisphere from Africa. The evolutionary origins of yellow fever most likely lie in Africa, with transmission of the