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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: USA, EU, UK refuse to share vaccine formulas.
Thread: USA, EU, UK refuse to share vaccine formulas. This thread is 29 pages long: 1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 ... 10 20 29 · «PREV / NEXT»
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted March 18, 2021 08:15 AM

The whole line of reasoning started with the statement that it's not medicine mainly that did something for life expectancy, but the general improvement of living and working conditions - which goes hand in hand with a certain wealth. In the so-called POOR countries there is no widespread general improvement of living and working conditions for the mass of the population - which includes general access to hospitals, medical drugs and treatment.
I suppose there ARE poor(er) countries with decent living conditions, medical supply and life expectancy, but I also suppose they are the not-capitalist ones.

You have to see "medicine" for what it really is. Decent nutrition and hygiene are pretty obvious pillars of health, and if that's a given (and that's not really something I'd credit to medicine, it's all known since ancient times), medicine starts with accidents and ailments. Something hurts (like a tooth) or something is really wrong (say, broken bone). Obvious stuff. Apart from that, it's the body itself that is responsible for health. Diseases are more or less mis- or dysfunctions of some internal part or another, say diabetes.
So the main achievement in "disease medicine" is mainly to get an idea how the body is even working and what each part does (this is the necessary precondition). The next step is to recognize symptoms and identify the problem. And the third one is to find a cure for it.

However - there is a lot we don't know and can't do. I mean, some things really sound impressive and some really are. Heart failure is something we've seen much improvement with within the last 50 years. But we are also pretty clueless in others, for example (most strikingly) - the immune system (which should basically be the main target of medical attention). Personal health is a question of a correctly working immune system more than anything else. It's bad when it's weak (or lax) and it's equally bad, when it's too attentive.

And here we are looking at the dark side. For every patient medicine helped you can find one who was treated wrongly and things got worse (because the problem was misdiagnosed or the cure did more bad than good).
This is the heart of the problem which made me post: medicine will make us live always longer, starting next year - this is typical human hubris nonsense. Our society worked so hard collectively to convince ourselves of medicine sitting next to god and being able to cure all, make the blind see and the lame walk, that everything is possible and everyone can live a long and healthy life, that we fully expect, if we have an ailment we go to a doctor and they'll make us healthy again.
But that's just not true.

You don't believe that? Well take this little inconvenience, look at how many people are believed to be suffering from that (15-45% worldwide) and then register, causes not clear, and no known cure. Oops.
And when you read that article, read it carefully. For example, you may read something like Antidepressants may improve overall symptoms and reduce pain. And IBS does not affect life expectancy or lead to other serious diseases. That should make you stop. Really? Is that so? Hmm.

And this is just ONE example. Have a problem? Get treatment. Doesn't help? Get another. Have a new problem in addition to the original one? Too bad, let's treat you.
One reason is - doctors aren't paid when they do nothing.

Anyway, I'm ranting. It's a combination of factors and the idea of medicine is a fine one, but in practise, what we miss is the Star Trek medical scanner, telling the doc everything they need to know.

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Minion
Minion


Legendary Hero
posted March 18, 2021 10:15 AM

JollyJoker said:
If you are poor, you don't have access to medicine either, because you can't pay for it. Medicine you are in need of just because you are poor in the first place.


Which countries are you talking about here? Medicine is available and affordable in a lot of the western world even to the poorest. Mostly because drugs are not that expensive, so you can afford them even with minimal income.

Using third world countries like Zimbabwe or The United States as an example is not very helpful
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 18, 2021 11:55 AM

It's actually rather simple. If you live in a poor country where large parts of the population suffer from malnutrition and generally awful living and working condition - do you really think there are capitalist countries that can provide their residents with adequate afordable medical care, but not with food, jobs and decent working conditions?

And the country doesn't even need to be poor - Quatar isn't exactly poor

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 18, 2021 12:41 PM
Edited by artu at 12:44, 18 Mar 2021.

Look JJ, as someone who opened this thread to point out to the issues of reducing the health sector to “a business like any other business,” I think, I am aware of the fact that pharmaceutical companies are trying to sell stuff. (Almost) claiming that all modern medicine is placebo is a little bit overdoing it though.


First of all, diseases, especially the contagious ones that killed masses so often in the past, are not dysfunctions, they CAUSE dysfunctions. But they are themselves organisms, creatures of nature just like us, bacteria, virus, microbes and a) people didnt know about this all along, b) even when they did, they couldnt do much about it at first. Modern medicine changed this situation, this is really not something to debate about but a historical fact.

Through out history, people knew about the importance of eating healthy and keeping clean, yes. But knowing this on an intuitive level is not the same as being able to provide actual hygieneic envorinment or knowing which food has which vitamin that cures what disease etc etc... I have no idea if you ever used a toilet in an actual, not urbanized village in your entire life but trust me, it’s no picnic. And if you look at food industry the way you look at the medicine business, food industry also kills a lot of people, heart disease, a primal cause of death is a lot of the times caused by bad eating habits. However, all of this happens after a certain age, you are very unlikely to die of obesity in your thirties, just like you are very unlikely to die of bad medicine practice in your thirties. Before modern medicine, antibiotics, vaccines, aspirin and so on, it was quite likely to die in your thirties though. So concluding that modern medicine has no serious effect on life expectancy by the logic that you use seems like a paradox to me: You are complaining about issues that mostly wouldnt have existed because most people who deal with them would have been already dead anyway.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 18, 2021 03:13 PM bonus applied by Corribus on 18 Mar 2021.

Look, the health sector has LONG become a business like any other business (or in fact like NO other because of the large profit margins). In fact, it became one when the Chinese practise of doctors being paid only if and when they cured their patients, wasn't followed up on, but probably deemed crazy by Westerners.

I'm not sure whether you see things in te right perspective.
The first thing to note is that we survived as a species without the blessings of "modern medicine" - obviously in the face of existing bacteria, virusses, diseases and so on. Naturally, in ancient times "medicine" was limited to help in case of an accident, but basically the human organism is designed to get things done without modern medicine. The basic things like healthy food and hygiene became a problem only when civilizations started to emerge and relatively large quantities of people lived together in cities with 10s of thousands of people, creating problems of hygiene and the potential for pandemics.
However, the ancient civs seem to have been managing that quite well. Indian Ayurveda is 6000 years old. Chinese traditional medicine is pretty old as well. The Egyptians seem to have known a lot about medicine as well, what with their mumification processes and so on. Hippocrates is Greek - but things went into decline after the fall of Rome, and the Christian ideas of the sanctity of body where a hard obstacle to overcome.
Antibiotics - mouldy bread - has already been used in acient times, for example by the Egyptians, for treatment, so the discovery of penicilin some 90 years ago was not something completely unheard of (and has been oversused since).
Medicine was of course helped by lots of modern inventions - say, the microscope - but actually, who has been profiting?
Germany has the oldest general health insurance in the world - the bill passed 1883 which marks the date workers could afford seeing a doctor or a hospital. Before that (and certainly still after that, just differently), no matter how beneficial modern medicine may have been, it was certainly not something for the masses up to that point.

Now about life expectancy. In the medieval ISLAMIC world the life expectancy of a scholar was 59 to 84 years, which is actually a lot. The problem in ancient times was reaching adulthood (not dying before) - after that there was always a decent enough life expectancy that has nothing to do with the 30 years you ment. An English noble in the 13. century could expect to reach 64 - after coming through to adulthood.

So what I say is that modern medicine is completely overrated. It also MUST be rated so high, otherwise the high costs couldn't be justified.

Fun fact: When cancer was diagnosed with my first wife she went to all the regular treatments and was dead 5 years after the diagnose. Shortly after that my oldest friend got his divorce, and shortly after that his then ex-wife was diagnosed with the same cancer than my wife. She rejected all conventional treatment and did only "alternative" stuff. The same five years later she was dead, the difference being that more people made more money with the disease of my wife. That is not to say, the conventional medicine had no effect - before her 2nd chemo she had to get a port installed - which was infested with some nasty germ, giving her 3-month in hospital.

Which is the crux. IDEALLY things - modern medicine - may look convincing. But they are NEVER ideal. There is always the fine print, always the chance of something not working as intended. Complications, mistakes, oversights.

And there is the massive amount of things modern medicine doesn't know, isn't able to cure, has difficulty to diagnose and so on. But the system is geared so that doing SOMETHING, even if completely clueless, is better, speak, more profitable, than doing nothing.

Conversely, if two different treatments qualify, the cheaper one is mandatory.

Lastly, modern medicine, however beneficial it may have been, had to be made available for the population first, which is social advance, not medical advance. Also, modern medicine wouldn't be of much use if people were still living and working under the conditions of 30-60-100-200 years ago.

Now, putting all this together - medicine doesn't work miracles and is prone to errors and mistreatment and social advance did a lot for people to simply live longer due to having not so hard a life and people having a lot of medical knowledge already in ancient times combined with everything I've personally seen so far (which is quite a lot, actually) - leads to me rating "modern medicine" lower than probably most.

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted March 18, 2021 03:29 PM

Nice post JJ. Dont know that I hold with the cynical perspective, but I enjoyed reading it. And sorry to hear about your wife. That's rough.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 18, 2021 04:05 PM
Edited by JollyJoker at 16:07, 18 Mar 2021.

Thanks. It WAS rough, I can tell you that, but I was still young enough to recover and continue life (finding a new love and a second marriage).

On March, 1st, 17 days ago, my mom died. Horribly. Long story short, she had been suffering from a light dementia plus kidney failure (an auto-immune thing destroying her kidneys). Dialysis worked, she lived still at home, only with the support of mobile eldercare, going three times a week to dialysis.
Last November she complained about pain when eating, her false teeth not fitting anymore. Checking showed a tumor in the mouth, palatal. Very fast growing. No more eating, inoperable (would have died in the OP), no chemo possible (dialysis), only radiation therapy, mostly palliative. Now, my mom could have gone for the OP, but didn't want the stress (and act against the advice of the docs who told her she's die on the op table) - so she went for radiation therapy that ended end of Jan. Meanwhile she was so weakened, she couldn't do much except lying down. Her palate was an open mess, festering. Eventually, very clearly in her mind, she decided to not go to dialysis anymore and die that way, basically the only option still open to her.
In hindsight, she should have gone for the operation - with luck she would have been anesthesized and not woken up anymore. But, hey, the way it went, a lot of money was made with her dying body, and it was one hell of a torture for her and everyone loving her.

Looking back in time, what ancient civilizations have been capable of without the benefits of science, computers, billions and trillions of money and megacorporations, the whole power of post 2nd WW capitalist way of life, I think that modern medicine is way back behind what it should be and what it could be already. I mean, covid is teaching us AGAIN a lesson about hospital hygiene. In 2020. Unbelievable.

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted March 18, 2021 04:13 PM

Thanks for sharing, and sorry about that as well. It opens a door to discussion of end of life care and euthanasia. The way we treat treat our terminally ill is rather cruel, but I guess a different topic.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 18, 2021 04:30 PM

Yes, it probably is - although it's part of "modern medicine" as well.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 18, 2021 06:30 PM

My condolences on your mother, I already knew about your first wife and my father is fighting stage 4 lung cancer at the moment, I know it’s rough. But it makes one read about cancer a lot to know enough that comparing 2 patients and saying “one did this and the other didnt, all the same” doesnt mean much because there are too many parameters when it comes to how a cancer would advance. Type, location, stage, patient’s history and genetics, sheer luck...

For the rest of your post, sigh, I dont know where to begin... It’s true that big epidemics started out with early cities and if I remember correctly, the first findings of mass graves and recorded written data is from Mesopotamia, Sumerian times. (Not so sure about the Sumerian part and I dont have the time to Wiki-refresh my memory at the moment, but many ancient civilizations from Latin American ones to Middle Eastern, had faced them at “almost wiped them out” level. So, I don’t know where you come up with this notion that before some Christian taboo, everything was okay and I can hardly imagine such a taboo would be practiced the same through each and every Christian culture through out history up until modern times. People wouldnt consistently stick to such a suicidal taboo anyway. But the main thing is, epidemics were common in ancient times, the big cities you talk about are the ancient times.

Now, before settlers and agriculture, yes, you didnt have epidemics but since the subject here is, life expectancy, they had their own limitations. First of all, since they didnt cultivate anything, they were intrinsically limited by natural resources surrounding them, so they were small tribes (which is certainly not something we can return to), and since they were mobile all the time, there wasnt much room for getting old, slow, getting injured, sick, crippled. I mean, nevermind old people, there is evidence supporting they killed sick or injured kids even, not to slow down. So they had “they shoot horses, dont they” kind of social norms.

Your claims about England directly contradicts with what I already linked here, you give no source, also the one with the “Muslim scholar” seems fishy to me, since it specifies “scholar” it must be talking about some special condition that you havent noticed or left out. I was just able to take a quick look to the set of life expectancy statistics Corribus linked yesterday and they seem to support my stance rather than yours and I read history a lot anyway, so it’s common knowledge to me, that things werent as optimal as you portray them here to insist on your objection. But for arguments sake, let’s say all of it is flawless info, the stats you give still dont contradict the very simple fact that modern medicine affected longetivity of life in a positive way. Once again to remind you, since the subject was life expectancy to begin with, I fail to understand why you are trying to convince me that modern medicine isnt perfect? I never claimed it is. But it did result in humans living longer and no, not just by helping them to get over the “dangerous childhood phase,” and I have linked and quoted enough information to support that.

And last but not least, saying “we survived without it” is completely tautological. Yes, we survived as a species, so that the two of us are able to sit here discussing this but that just proves we survived enough to keep reproducing till our times. It says nothing about the survival ratio or life span. We survived by the most conventional tactic, we made a lot of children and most of them died out. The ones who were immune or gained immunity through surviving a disease... well, survived.

Anyway, this will be it from me today cause it’s my beer night tonight, once I start rolling, I wouldnt want to crush you with my super powers of drunk sarcasm and wit. Maybe, I’ll drop by the music thread. I’m out for now.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 18, 2021 07:32 PM

Thank you.

link

I didn't say everything was ok before Christian dominated medieval times in Europe. I said it got worse. While medicine wasn't a science in our sense of the word, people outside of this room had a lot of knowledge about medicine, a lot of which got lost or, paradoxically, fell victim to superstition. I also didn't say that modern medicine didn't contribute to longevity (dialysis would be an example) - I said the contribution was smaller than what was gained by social advance, better working and living conditions, better food (until it went the opposite direction) and so on.

When it comes to cancer, there are only two really relevant factors:
1) (Where is the tumor located and) can it be removed completely?
2) Has it been diagnosed before metastazation could take place?

If both questions are answered with no you are dead. Medicine may be able to squeeze some time out of it and lengthen your span - but time is relative. If your cancer is treated the time in which you are treated isn't really quality time...
If both questions are answered with yes or at least with highly likely in case of 2, your chances are not so bad.

All other cases depend (on the factors you mentioned plus for example whether there is a mental component). That's my bottom line.

I'm well aware that you cannot compare cases, but it's pretty ironic nonetheless.

I add, that I would consider conventional treatment useless in case of an inoperable tumor that already metastasized. Just because something CAN be done, it doesn't mean it SHOULD be done. There are a lot of diseases nothing can be done against and people have to live with the fact that they will slowly wither away and die.

Getting a few months older may not be worth it.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 19, 2021 12:30 PM
Edited by artu at 12:46, 19 Mar 2021.

So, basically, your link confirms me pointing out that “when you think of historical people who are old, they are mostly high-class and lived under completely different standards than extreme majority.” Muslim scholar is the equivalent of English aristocrat. Keep in mind that this also means you are able to protect yourself from contagions much easier by hiding out in your castle, storing food etc etc.

And for the rest of your comment, as I already said, I dont think you can dissect better social conditions and cured diseases. I’m not talking about things like diabetes or having cancer at 65. Just look at how one pandemic without medical cure, and not an overwhelmingly deadly one I might add, affected the social conditions.

Now, in your very own link, we have this information for instance, it is a perfect example of the relation between medicine and life expectancy:

“There are great variations in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care, and diet. The impact of AIDS on life expectancy is particularly notable in many African countries. According to projections made by the United Nations (UN) in 2002, the life expectancy at birth for 2010–2015 (if HIV/AIDS did not exist) would have been:

70.7 years instead of 31.6 years, Botswana
69.9 years instead of 41.5 years, South Africa
70.5 years instead of 31.8 years, Zimbabwe”

P.S. Edit:  In my father’s case, it’s small cell lung cancer, it metastasized to his brain, paralyzing him but ironically, this was how they were able to spot the tumor early and removed it completely. It’s been over a year now, he responds to chemo, he is walking, talking, living his life as usual as he can. Since it’s stage 4, it will never cure completely of course, but he’s so far from a “pull the plug” condition at the moment. The only thing is, it’s hard to communicate with him because he’s from the “strong silent type” generation and just keeps telling you how everything is fine, yet when you pay attention to details, you can see how frustrated he feels sometimes. But since he holds it in, sometimes he just snaps at you for no reason. I still visit as often as I can.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 19, 2021 12:45 PM

You are looking at this from the wrong perspective. If the countries in Africa wouldn't be so socially poor and people had a life and an education there wouldn't be the need for HIV meds in the first place - which don't cure the patients, mind you. They have to take the meds their whole life which keep the virus propagation in check, mind you. If you have AIDS you have it your whole life.
Your example only serves to explain that modern medicine has absolutely no effect on life expectancy when you are poor.

I also cannot understand what you find curious about picking an English NOBLE as an example. If YOU were right, it shouldn't make a difference whether you pick a noble or a commoner. But there is a difference which means your living and work conditions are pretty decisive (provided you don't start your life with life-shortening defects in the first place).

I also don't separate medicine and social conditions - social conditions just gain priority, the Marxist way. If your living condition are bad you'll die sooner, no matter the state of the medicine.

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artu
artu


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Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 19, 2021 12:59 PM
Edited by artu at 13:01, 19 Mar 2021.

I knew you were going to say this, I even thought of replying in advance but the nobles living longer isnt exactly relevant to how modern medicine stopped so many contagious, deadly diseases from being a casual, seasonal thing that made masses drop like flies. You focus too much on the ones that cant be cured, you lose sight of the so many ones that had been cured, polio, chicken pox, diphtheria, leprosy, malaria... You are not even reminded of these because at this point in time, they are so irrelevant and harmless to you, but these were all common and they all had impact on life expectancy on average. Yes, if you were a kid, they were even deadlier but it’s not like when you reached 18, if you had decent food and a clean house, they disappeared.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 19, 2021 01:52 PM
Edited by JollyJoker at 13:57, 19 Mar 2021.

artu said:
but the nobles living longer isnt exactly relevant to how modern medicine stopped so many contagious, deadly diseases from being a casual, seasonal thing that made masses drop like flies.
It is relevant in explaining that no matter the medical situation, living and working conditions make and have always made a profound difference in life expectancy. Of course this is a factor with "masses dropping like flies": if you are healthy and well-nourished and you don't work bone-breakingly hard 6 days for 14 and more hours, you will have much more energy to resist these things.

Vaccinating the public is something that would have been unthinkable in the 19th century and before - if there had been something it would have cost a fortune and would have been sold to the rich people, because the poor wouldn't have had ANY money to spare and the governments would have done nothing.

EDIT: Ok, they started in the late 1860s with mandatory vaccinations in England and Germany (against smallpox), but I also read that the principle was known and used in China 200 B.C. already. So it's not modern medicine, but science in that case.

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 19, 2021 02:09 PM

Heheh, saved by China huh?

That’s like saying modern biology starts with Anaximandros because he talked about evolution or that we live in the age of atom since Democritus. Such ancient explanations and practice, usually based on intuition are not the same with modern technics. I mean, sure, you can say something like “the concept existed before Edward Jenner” but it was hardly something that had world wide effect or depended on methodical research.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 19, 2021 03:54 PM

That's why I said, it's an acievement of SCIENCE, not medicine.

Frankly, I don't even see what your point is. Africa exists in a world with modern medicine. However, it obviously doesn't profit, because it's socially and economically poor.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 19, 2021 04:23 PM
Edited by artu at 16:26, 19 Mar 2021.

Yeah well, it is not as easily accessible to them (although, one of the links said that even the poorest regions today, are better than the pre-1800’s best) but that doesnt mean in places where medicine is accessible, it’s just the rich who can buy them and they did not change public health standards.

I don’t know why you are so obsessed with the word “modern medicine,” obsessed enough to try to find strange loop holes by bringing in Ancient China and so on. Science has its own pre-history, sure, and you can trace back many practices or inventions to their earlier origins. But when the context is how average life expectancy got up in recent times and modern medicine’s part in it, it must be quite obvious to anyone, that we are talking about vaccines, antibiotics, public hospitals etc, “in the modern sense.” Bringing up some ancient practice, which was most probably only practiced by some court doctors of the emperor or something like that, only to be able to object to the term “modern medicine” is only being stubborn. So good luck with that.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted March 19, 2021 04:42 PM

That is your opinion. But actually you have no points to support it. You just regurgiate stuff like, no, it's obvious that... It's not.

If you think about the conditions the majority of the people lived in in the 19th century, it's clear that these conditions simply wasted their lives away. The key isn't medicine, the key is not getting sick in the first place (or, more correct: as late as possible) and not bleed away your life under inhuman conditions.

So people simply get sick LATER in life. People have heart failures in their 70s or 80s, not in their 50s. And people could get much older and keep healthy longer if they wouldn't eat so much crap, sit too much, take drugs, smoke, drink, and so on.

I mean, don't you think, the life expectancy of an islamic scholar in the medieval of 69-84 is pretty illuminating?

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husham123
husham123


Famous Hero
Yes
posted March 19, 2021 04:50 PM

I'm sorry if this seems ignorant, because I actually forgot who brought this up before (in this thread), but...

JollyJoker said:
Looking back in time, what ancient civilizations have been capable of without the benefits of science, computers, billions and trillions of money and megacorporations, the whole power of post 2nd WW capitalist way of life, I think that modern medicine is way back behind what it should be and what it could be already. I mean, covid is teaching us AGAIN a lesson about hospital hygiene. In 2020. Unbelievable.


It seems that even though the developing world is increasingly getting access to medicine, we are still facing issues of improper funding. The class systems of ancient civilizations were arguably not marked by such a complex divide as in today's modern societies. Many times, the king, pharaoh, etc, could just decree something and it were to be done, but today, where virtually everyone's power is determined by their financial situation, that is nearly impossible to do, because no-one wants to be caught in a Freudian slip, bending the rules of the free market to their own advantage. Here in England, you had monarchs like Queen Victoria that cared about medicinal advances and even opened the Royal Free hospital in London which also acted as a teaching school. She volunteered to try out chloroform as an anaesthetic during childbirth, as well as other trial drugs from time to time. The life expectancy during her time period came to be on average 40 years for men, but surprisingly only went up by 5 years in half a century. Twice that time passes yet again, and despite not one, but TWO world wars, life expectancy in this country more than doubled. How come ? Well, the National Health Service, amongst other things, meant that they had the proper funding to carry out their services, studies, developments etc.

But, there's always a 'but'. What happened during the Victorian Era was that as society became more and more industrialized, people which had to adapt to city life were left derelict. They lacked proper housing, proper nutrition etc, because there was uncertainty. There was no point in saving up and buying a house in the city (which due to high demand was already high as it was), when the factory that you moved there for might as well go defunct soon thereafter ? And so many people grew accustomed to what they subconsciously considered a 'temporary' life. Not to mention, working lands that you owned or herding animals that you owned was not possible in an urban environment that did not rely on agriculture as much. TL;DR people were poor. All the same, capitalism was firmly establishing its position, as well as Conservatism and Liberalism, that both tried to strengthen a free-market approach.

Without the free-market, having a National Health Service, people were able to afford treatment, because people did not have to pay upfront everytime, it was funded gradually through taxation. However, we've returned to more of a free-market approach than ever before here in the West. NHS staff here in England had their wages cut in favor of 23 billion pounds going towards missiles, and in the US health insurance makes matters much more complicated with their conditions. It's no wonder that many people cannot afford a quality treatment, either because of money itself, or because the services are inadequate because of a lack of money on their part. That is why the UK has so far had 126,000 deaths from COVID, while the US had 539,000 deaths from COVID, putting them in the top 10, and they are so far removed from China in terms of logistics.
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What the darn-diddily-doodily did you just say about me, you little witcharooney? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class at Springfield Bible College, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret

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