I never said lifestyle changes would stop a disease in progress, I said they can prevent disease from taking hold.
Not when it comes to chickenpox, measles, and other highly contagious diseases.
What you said was, and I quote: "The root of epidemic disease is unhealthy populations with inadequate resources." You also blamed disease on American diet. Diseases like chickenpox, measles, polio, smallpox and the like don't spread because of those conditions. You can try to twist around it, but I feel fairly comfortable in my interpretation.
It's why countries like China and India have survived throughout the ages.
I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Humans have survived for thousands of years, all over the globe, despite living without any medications and in unsanitary conditions. The result is high infant mortality rates, people dying younger than they would today, and people suffering for years with painful conditions.
Every time there's a plague, or a famine, millions of people die, but compare that to the hundreds of millions that live because of their age old knowledge about bolstering the body.
I'll stick to the millions that die in those plagues, and who blame the disease on demons and spirits and deities, instead of knowing that it's a bacteria spread by fleas that are carried by rats.
Modern medicine that is manufactured by the west doesn't know anything about prevention. They need a pathogen to have any purpose at all as a body of knowledge. If a healthy person walks into a doctor's office, they'll just get sent home.
I'm sorry to tell you that this is nearly complete bull****.
Vaccines
are preventative medicine. Vaccines
do work. You haven't presented a stitch of evidence to the contrary.
Western medicine has figured out how we can avoid all sorts of diseases, such as the aforementioned scurvy, cholera, STD's.... Chinese acupuncturists didn't figure out that germs and bacteria cause disease; South American shamans didn't figure out that washing your hands helps prevent the spread of disease. I know of no evidence that non-Western medicine is actually any good at predicting diseases years in advance, let alone effectively preventing diseases.
Thanks to empirical and scientific methods, we know that viruses exist; that germs exist; that bacteria can be beneficial and harmful; that genes play various roles in medical conditions, and so forth. We also know, using empirical and scientific methods, that non-Western methods generally don't work.
It's not a superiority complex.
It's results.
Also note that I acknowledged vaccines as part of disease control. I never said they are useless. Get your fingers out of your ears.
Right, so the reason why refuse to take vaccines unless there's a massive deadly epidemic is because you acknowledge they're a part of disease control. Heck, right in your
own response you said you wouldn't get a vaccine unless your life was in mortal danger.
I also find it bizarre that you criticize Western medicine for its alleged de-emphasis of prevention, yet you refuse to actually take one of the most effective tools we have to prevent common diseases.
I'm saying we need a more comprehensive system of prevention because as it stands we just tell people to eat well, exercise, and drink plenty of water as prevention for virtually any disease. Even the American Cancer Society says that crap. It's not doing anything.
The "Western" medical establishment is largely concluding that you should eat well, get roughly 30 minutes of exercise a day, avoid processed food, don't smoke, and this will prevent
certain conditions -- like heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers.
Do what you want, it really has nothing to do with me.
Unfortunately, it does. As I mentioned previously, *cough* scientific evidence has established that this is not just an individual choice, it also affects the community around you. By refusing to get vaccinated, you are not only a freeloader on the protection offered by others, you offer those diseases another vector for transmission. You are, in a very small way, causing harm to your community. Since you claim to understand that vaccines work, I don't see how your choice is a rational one, or one to be proud of.