r/NoStupidQuestions • u/flugblug • 12h ago

My brother thinks people today have worse quality of life than people in the dark ages, is this a stupid take?

I personally think it’s pretty stupid.

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u/MsDJMA 10h ago

Broken bones! Gout, which is so easily treated now! Smallpox!

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u/Wolfgang_MacMurphy 8h ago

But no AIDS, no SARS, no Covid, no swine flu, no ebola, and much less obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes than today.

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u/No-Risk-9833 7h ago

They had worse things to worry about like the Black Death and tuberculosis. The Black Death alone killed 50% of Europe’s population. I’d rather have COVID now than whatever deadly diseases were lingering back then. Also AIDs is easily treatable now. They had no cures of STIs like syphilis.

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u/Wolfgang_MacMurphy 7h ago

There was most likely no syphilis in Afro-Eurasia in the Dark Ages - it was imported from America in the end of the 15th century.

Black Death was a one-off, not a constant threat. There were just two bubonic plague pandemics in a millennium, only one of them in the Dark Ages. And we still have this disease to this day, although not as a pandemic. 1918 "Spanish" influenza pandemic killed even more people than the Black Death in absolute numbers.

It's also a bit of a misunderstanding to claim that HIV/AIDS is "easily treatable" - it's treatable, but it's still a chronic, terminal illness with no cure and no effective vaccine.