5 ms·
How did humanity ever survive this long without modern medicine?
by impendingchange 5y ago
How did humanity ever survive this long without modern medicine?
- throwaway894345 5y agoWell, a lot of people died, mostly.
- dahfizz 5y agoBy letting people die. If covid came around in the 1200s, then everyone would have gotten it and ~3% of the world population would have died. Definitely suboptimal but nowhere near an extinction event.
- jtc331 5y agoGiven COVID’s risk/age relationship and already lower life spans in that time period plus higher vitamin D exposure rates it’s quite likely rate of death would have been lower in that population.
- nradov 5y agoThe infection fatality rate was never as high as 3%. The CDC estimated it at 0.6% back when almost no one was vaccinated.
- astura 5y agoNobody said it was? The question was about a world without modern medicine. It's totally reasonable to speculate there would be a higher fatality rate without medical intervention keeping people from dying.
- bostik 5y agoLaw of large numbers. The widespread plagues of the past were never 100% lethal, or we wouldn't be here - a sizable fraction of the population survived, and over several rounds of infection/reinfection gained something we'd think of sterilising immunity. In the meanwhile, the plagues and their knock-on effects may have eliminated approximately HALF of the entire population of their times.[0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death ("is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population")