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I did not mean to be belligerent in my response and I'm sorry if I offended you. As I said above, in the Western world, sanitation and other interventions both
by evolve2017 9y ago
I did not mean to be belligerent in my response and I'm sorry if I offended you.
As I said above, in the Western world, sanitation and other interventions both contributed to our current state of health. As the graph I linked to shows, antibiotics haven't appreciably changed the rate of decline of infectious disease. This is no way means that antibiotics and/or vaccines are ineffective. As you point out, looking at specific diseases shows that these interventions are helpful.
Here's the data for measles if folks are interested - there was indeed a remarkable drop after the institution of the vaccine[1].
1. https://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html https://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.htm...
- evolve2017 9y agoI think I'm outside the edit window for my comment. As a coda, it looks like mortality due to measles may have been declining before the incidence of measles began to decline; this further supports a role for other societal developments in decreasing death from infectious disease. This is purportedly related to the use of antibiotics to decrease bacterial sequelae of measles. I saw an academic reference to this effect but I can't find it again - here's a popular article. You'll note that this commentator ascribes some of the decrease in measles-related death to sanitation. 1. http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-deaths-pre-vaccine/ http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-deaths-...