If you get cholera you'll probably be ok. Because you have easy access to food, water, and other sources of hydration as well as good sanitary facilities (read:

If you get cholera you'll probably be ok. Because you have easy access to food, water, and other sources of hydration as well as good sanitary facilities (read: modern toilets). You'll take time off work, you'll spend a while being miserable in bed or on the couch, you'll drink a lot of liquids, and then you'll get better. Worst case you'll feel so bad you need to ask a friend to take you to the hospital, or call an ambulance, and then you'll get IV fluids and you'll still be ok. Less than 1% of cholera cases involve fatalities when people have access to modern treatment options. Does that mean that the fatality rate of cholera is less than 1%? Not at all, in situations where cholera is left untreated, in areas without access to clean water, modern sanitation facilities, and medical facilities the fatality rate is about 50-60%. That's true of many other diseases as well, from the Flu to measles to smallpox. The spread of disease, it's lethality, and it's impact on society and civilization as a whole are all dependent on factors beyond the characteristics of the disease itself. Just as today the lethality and impact of cholera on society is very different in, say, Canada versus Mozambique. Yes, we know that there was a massive die off of indigenous populations in the Americas (and Australia) that occurred in large part due to diseases spread from the old world. The idea that the mere existence of certain diseases was sufficient to doom those populations to the fate they had is what is called a "theory". Diamond and CGPGrey, and others, treat it as some incontrovertible fact. It relies on the fatality rate and spread of diseases being unconnected with technology, society, culture, etc. And it relies on the assumption that certain death tolls will necessarily lead to civilizational collapse. Both theories have numerous counter-examples.