It's not a trap in this context. Somebody who dies from malaria in 1500 is just as dead as somebody who dies from malaria today. Their friends and family are li

It's not a trap in this context. Somebody who dies from malaria in 1500 is just as dead as somebody who dies from malaria today. Their friends and family are likely to react differently due to different culture, and they will assign different causality, but dead is dead. The whole point of this article is to compare material conditions today to the past. Which isn't the only thing that matters, but it absolutely does matter, and comparisons can be made.