I didn’t know ’til now that some people — obvious able to navigate a computer — think that disease is caused by one’s surroundings, by one’s state of mind, not by disease. A representative sample, in response to a citation of Guns, Germs, and Steel:
How wrong you are. Native Americans died because they have been treated worse than lice. They have been chased off of their fathers land by bandits with shotguns. Their mothers, wives and daughters have been raped, their kids murdered.
The stupid little kids of the rich, they have shit for brains and cannot understand anymore that people who are living in poverty and filth die young simply because their terrible diseases are caused by their misery. You have no eyes to see that, you can only look in a microscope and say: “Hey, another virus! I found out why they’re sick! Let’s heal’em with chemo”.
But the microbes, they are not the cause of disease. They are the result.
Sorry, what did you say? I’m a fool and a Denialist? Yeah I know. And very proud to be one.
So the natives’ demise was due to their unhappiness at being conquered. If only they had been as stoic and unyielding as the foes of germ theory. A great thread of comments, if you like that sort of thing: the crazies are way outnumbered and the reality-based posters are plainly enjoying themselves.