What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • PhenomenalPancake@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 days ago

    That being said, even among people who survived childhood, living to the ages we see nowadays was more rare than it is today due to a lot of environmental and societal factors like plagues and war. It wasn’t unheard of, but that is also something that brought the average down to an extent.

    • Watermark710@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      We essentially had a plague in 2020, and there are multiple wars going on as we speak. Those factors didn’t disappear.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        True, but we don’t wholesale shit in our drinking water any more while riddled with syphilis

      • PhenomenalPancake@lemmy.worldOP
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        2 days ago

        The deaths from both the wars going on in the modern day and infectious diseases like COVID are nowhere near on the scale that they were before, especially in terms of the percent of the world population killed by them. We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.

        • TachyonTele@piefed.social
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          16 hours ago

          Fun fact, the bubonic plague never went away. It’s still kicking around the world. Obviously not like it was with The Plague, but still.

          • DokPsy@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            There are a couple cases a year in the States. It’s treatable now, that’s the difference

        • Watermark710@piefed.social
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          2 days ago

          We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.

          WWII had 3-5 times the number of deaths (depending on whose numbers you trust) as WWI though? Like, it’s not even close. Even using the highest estimate for WWI (22 million) and the lowest estimate for WWII (70 million) WWII was more than triple the deaths.

          The global population at the time of WWI was ~1.8 billion, and at the time of WWII is was 2.3 billion.

          So in terms of of percent of the world population, WWI loses.

          I will concede that the Spanish flu was a lot worse than COVID.