[toolz]

I can't stress enough how dangerous it is to pretend society can end a virus that is not only incredibly contagious between humans but also has many animal carriers.

There is nothing more dangerous than society with no trust and this completely fabricated idea that people's behavior is to blame for the continued existence of covid serves no purpose other than to erode trust.

[impendingchange]

How did humanity ever survive this long without modern medicine?

[bostik]

Law of large numbers. The widespread plagues of the past were never 100% lethal, or we wouldn't be here - a sizable fraction of the population survived, and over several rounds of infection/reinfection gained something we'd think of sterilising immunity.

In the meanwhile, the plagues and their knock-on effects may have eliminated approximately HALF of the entire population of their times.[0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death ("is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population")

[dahfizz]

By letting people die. If covid came around in the 1200s, then everyone would have gotten it and ~3% of the world population would have died. Definitely suboptimal but nowhere near an extinction event.

[jtc331]

Given COVID’s risk/age relationship and already lower life spans in that time period plus higher vitamin D exposure rates it’s quite likely rate of death would have been lower in that population.

[nradov]

The infection fatality rate was never as high as 3%. The CDC estimated it at 0.6% back when almost no one was vaccinated.

[astura]

Nobody said it was?

The question was about a world without modern medicine. It's totally reasonable to speculate there would be a higher fatality rate without medical intervention keeping people from dying.

[throwaway894345]

Well, a lot of people died, mostly.