@samueltyler2 I have - Facts! Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine by many. However, Imhotep practiced medicine 2200 years before Hippocrates. China developed acupuncture and other medicines over 3000 years ago. Even African shaman used medicines for thousands of years. Many of the same medicines we used today, which are called "synthetic," derived from natural remedies and isolating the properties of those natural ingredients.

@TheArbitrator my point was, and is, they were not called physicians, didn't practice an organized medicine nor did they have reproducible medicine. We, to some extent, are arguing semantics. But, until recently the practice of medicine did not have "cures," it was more comforting the sick.

By the way younthrowvaround thebterm "thousands," of years. That would depend upon having recorded information to show the practice. We have very limited such. I don't consider trephening as really a practice of medicine. There is evidence of what appears to be purposeful opening of the skull, and survival, but, again I don't think of that as practitioners practicing medicine.

The Egyptian "physician" was describing illnesses, not practicing medicine, but, yes, I will agree that was 4000 years ago.

@TheArbitrator I feel that I do have to apologize for taking your point so literally. I was having a difficult day and felt, probably incorrectly, that you were saying that modern medicine, as defined as post Hippocrates, was not responsible for strides made in human health. I am embarrassed that I went off so strongly, but the anti-vaxxers on SW set me off. Modern public health has made a tremendous difference in all of our health. Until covid, most members of modern society have experienced a steady increased in life expectancy. That has stopped now, and it is difficult for me to understand why the role of public health and science is so controversial, why the refusal to do something simple, such as wear a mask, and why the distrust of a vaccine which has actually been subjected to more intense study than any previous vaccine in history. I spent most of my adult life trying to help people live longer, better lives, I can't just turn that part of me off.

ANyway, please accept my apology if I came off too strong, too heavily.

@TexChik the hypocrisy is real. Our mayor pushed for the mask mandate and was photographed with others who were not her family and none of them were wearing masks. Yet she had local businesses fined for breaking the mandate. Left Walmart and other national corporations alone though.

@QuixoticSoul several plaques did significant risk human existence! The concept of herd immunity probably limited the deaths and allowed continuation of the species.

Would you want to go back even a couple of hundred years ago, to the time when having 5 or more children was common as was having only 1 or 2 reach adulthood?

@Pikachu I am talking about the mRNA covid vaccines, specifically. Unvaccinated isn't the same as anti-vax. Many of us are perfectly fine with vaccines and in fact, we would be fine with the covid vax if after a couple of years it's been proven to be safe.

@TheArbitrator

[quote]Unvaccinated isn't the same as anti-vax[/quote]

And that's something people need to remember.
But you asked how people survived without vaccines and the answer is with a lot of death.
It's the same answer to how people will survive without the mRNA vaccines which have proven more effective against novel strains of this virus while more traditional vaccines are proving less effective.

mRNA isn't a new technology.
And these vaccines have been shown to be safe by the very fact that they are arising in a pandemic.
While most vaccines can take many moths or years to test because enough infected people must come forward as volunteers, this vaccine has had the benefit of having hundreds of thousands of infected people all at once willing to be test subjects.

With every vaccine so far, even the long term side effects that can and have resulted have presented within the first few weeks after injection.

So you wait on the COVID vaccine and you wait in safety because we're going to take it and we're going to knock this disease down before it can get to you.

@TheArbitrator if you survive the time it takes for you to believe they are well proven. There are already over 4 million deaths worldwide and over 620k just in the US!

@Picklebobble2 and bacteria, and cleaned the water and food using science to accmomplish this!

@cherokeepatti And nothing has changed.

@curiosi have you ever seen a child die from measles, meningitis, whooping cough, tetanus, or any of the infectious diseases we have essentially eliminated by the use of immunizations? I lived through all of those. While at it, have you heard of congenital rubella? What stopped that?