3 ms·
How much of the black death date rate was due to lack of medical knowledge? Would we really have the same terrible outcome if a similar disease hit today?
by winstonewert 6y ago
How much of the black death date rate was due to lack of medical knowledge? Would we really have the same terrible outcome if a similar disease hit today?
- renjimen 6y agoWell, all of it was due to the lack of medical knowledge. The bubonic plague hardly kills anyone anymore. The point the parent is making is that we shouldn't compare the societal effects of COVID19 today with that of the bubonic plague when it was at its worst.
- winstonewert 6y agoBut his conclusion seems to have been: we need to worry about what happens if a disease like the black plague hits again: which, well, no we don't. If we need to worry about a future pandemic its one which is quite different the plauge and thus one we are defenseless against.
- rurp 6y agoI believe the point was that we need to worry about a pandemic that is as bad as the black plague was, not that we just need to worry about that disease specifically. The OP even mentioned bird flus as one class that could cause similar devastation.
- Closi 6y agoExactly, what if ebola and covid-19 had a baby, and then that baby, and then the flu and plague had a baby, and then those two babies fucked? That kind of disease would totally wipe us out.
- throwaway894345 6y agoWhy do you think that? We could work to improve our ability to rapidly develop vaccines and stockpile PPE. Those two things would go a long way. Analyzing our supply chains and finding critical points of failure would be another conceivable step.
- winstonewert 6y agoWhy do I think what exactly?
- throwaway894345 6y agoThat we would be defenseless against a future pandemic?
- winstonewert 6y agothat's the opposite of what I meant. I'm skeptical of the possibilty of a pandemic we couldn't defend against.
- hutzlibu 6y agoWell, today we have antibiotics, so no, we do not have to fear the original black death anymore. But what we also have today, to mitigate the bonus of medicine and hygiene, is fast global travel and very, very crowded cities, compared to the medieval times. So a highly infectious and deadly disease, we can not treat with antibiotics, would still fuck us up pretty bad. So I agree, covid was a good trial run for a real epidemic.
- triceratops 6y agoI think GP was hypothesizing an epidemic that had a black death rate even with our present medical knowledge.
- winstonewert 6y agook, but then the crucial question becomes: are we likely to see that? I tend to think that those scenarios aren't possible anymore, but maybe I'm being overly optimistic.