189: When Children Died Young

spk_1:   0:00
Hello, everybody.

spk_0:   0:01
Hello and welcome to the show The Big Show, the most important and critically acclaimed podcast that is recorded in her car. And today we're in the car and it is raining where to arrive in eastward head knees, its eastward bound. We're heading towards Illinois, and today we're going to talk about an article we have just written. And this podcast should actually, assuming we get back in time, appear the same day that we recall, which is kind of unusual. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to my co author and somebody who's a lot more of an expert on the actual subject than I am and let my partner in no crime spice talk a little bit about Children and the old and day is and why we don't do that and more.

spk_1:   1:03
The article was stimulated. We're going for a drive A few weeks ago came across one of the old little town Cemetery's

spk_0:   1:11
little nowhere.

spk_1:   1:12
Yeah, way more dead people than live people in that part of the country anymore. So old church old graveyard not to stop Triggs around and wandering through the graveyard and reading the tombstones and 3/4 of them were people under the age of five. Many of them in fact, we're just listed as baby or infant because they had yet named the child when the child expired. And it reminded me about the massive changes infant mortality that have occurred since just 18 60 actually, in this part of the country. Oh, what was probably the 18 nineties, when that most of those graves were 18 nineties era graves and they were still showing well, more than half the deaths were people under the age of five,

spk_0:   2:07
which was this was a the most common thing ever back then. You don't think about Children dying today. I mean, yes, it still does happen. You know, there's Children with grave diseases, sudden infant death. It does happen other Children who are born with birth defects as tragic. But you know, right now this is such a small percentage of the Children who make it to a survivable age in the womb from there until they reach adulthood. It's a very, very, very small percentage today, but

spk_1:   2:48
less than 5% worldwide,

spk_0:   2:50
and that's including a lot of Third World country. It's nowhere near that here in the United States, I believe it's about one person about that. Um, I have to look at the stats exactly, but it's about one person as late as 1800 which is when statistics for this kind of stuff was really starting to actually be taken. Before that we don't really know because doing it, they were doing the statistics off. But as late as 1800 worldwide, 43% of the Children who were born did not survive until the age of five.

spk_1:   3:32
I think that was actually 18.

spk_0:   3:34
What was the 18 hundreds? Yes, what I'm

spk_1:   3:36
saying? Yeah, 43%. 43%. There's a lot of nostalgia for the good old days, but that wasn't one of the good parts. And that's one of the parts we don't want to go back to. If we are thrown out of our materially comfortable Third World lifestyles here

spk_0:   3:57
now, we're gonna talk about this first world. Second world. This is a new thing. Okay, this first world Third world think you know, back in 18 40 there was it wasn't first world Third World That made no difference when it came to immortality because whether you're in Europe or whether you're in United States or whether you're in Africa. The death rates were very similar.

spk_1:   4:21
They were worse in cities than in rural areas. And that's about what you had.

spk_0:   4:25
That's yeah, that's about it. Didn't really matter. Whether was the black hole of Calcutta versus London's East End versus Boston? Didn't really matter. But that has changed because we have first world hygiene First world, clean water, First world, uh, medical. We have first world backs and nations, and then they have a second world, which is, you know, they're not was not as developed, but they're still pretty good. And then you have the third role places and some of those places are really bad Liberia, you know, in South Africa, the world's largest slum, you got places you just name. I could name the country that you go right now. Venezuela, with their what's going on, there is a little Paraguay is having issues. Monrovia. You wanna talk about messed up? Monrovia, Chad

spk_1:   5:27
and some of these places, like Venezuela, would have been considered first world countries, or at least second world. Five years ago, maybe 10. I have been watching their politics honestly, but so it can recur. So we wanted to talk about what the biggest reasons were for that child mortality, because we don't have to go back there if we lose this really high level medical care, it doesn't take the highest level of medical care to get the really steep drop off in infant mortality. So if we're careful about how we do things weaken, keep that awful tragedy of infant mortality low even as we lose a lot of the highest level service is it is undeniable what the single biggest improvement was in child, an infant mortality, and that was hygiene when hygienic practices became widespread. That's when the death rates took a nosedive.

spk_0:   6:25
Now this isn't only in like childhood diseases. This is in the general population is about one thing you really, really, really, really see. This in is if you look at armies and you compare the battlefield deaths versus the deaths off the battlefield. Today, people in the U. S. Army aren't dying of dysentery. But in the Civil War, most of the people who died in the civil war who were soldiers didn't were not killed or wounded on the battlefield and died from their wounds. Most of them died of things like dysentery, yellow fever, yellow fever, malaria, these types of things. Now, yellow fever isn't necessarily a hygiene thing, but dysentery. So it was

spk_1:   7:13
absolutely a hygiene. I know how they spread it. Okay? The doctors would go around. Oh, somebody's 18 years got yellow fever. Hey, look, I can go examine these guys and tell which ones are going to get yellow fever. So he goes to the guy with yellow fever and May pulls down his tongue and he shows his tongue to his students and says, See, this guy's got the characteristic signs of yellow fever. You see this in this? In this. And then he goes to the next guy who doesn't have yellow fever, opens his mouth, pushes down his tongue with his thumbs and says, See here, see how you're just beginning to see these really subtle changes on the back of this tongue. This guy's going to develop yellow fever and about four days, and then he goes to the next guy and handles his tongue. Oh, look, he's going to develop yellow fever in about four days to and he was right. It's a miracle. What's the fact that he wasn't flipping, washing his hands between? He was handling the spit of somebody with yellow fever and rubbing it on the tongues of next five guys in line that could have had something to do with it. Which is why I say it was a hygiene issue

spk_0:   8:15
at least.

spk_1:   8:16
Yeah, that was a particular documented case, but these incredibly overworked medical people will. We're trying to care for the wounded and the sick in the same wards at the same

spk_0:   8:27
time on, you know so much. And it was the the instruments. We're not even being washed off between patients. They all had wooden handles on them

spk_1:   8:38
which don't sterilize well, a

spk_0:   8:40
tall Yeah, but then they didn't really sterilize it anyway. I mean, so though the instruments would carry all these bugs from person to person, Bacteria's and you name it Viruses. Yeah. There was no sterilization. The dressings weren't sterilized. Yeah, this is all a hygiene thing. We think of hygiene as like Oh, you're brushing your teeth, coming your hair, taking a shower. But there's a lot more to it than that.

spk_1:   9:08
And a purse sprint isn't really hygiene. That's making you more pleasant to other human beings. It's not cleanliness issue. It's a social issue over Washington hands. We're

spk_0:   9:19
not opposed to use it. You

spk_1:   9:21
feel free. Don't get me wrong. But I want to be clear what we're talking about here. The reason the death rates concentrated in the under five population is because that some proportion of people will survive most of these diseases. For some diseases, it's a very tiny proportion For some diseases. It's a relatively large proportion, but almost any of these diseases at least some people who get them survive and their immune systems are thereby have a bunch of memory cells that know how to attack that germ, and they're unlikely to die of it later in life. So if you don't die of the thing the first time you get it, you're unlikely to die the 2nd 3rd 4th 5th or 17th time. You're exposed to

spk_0:   10:00
it because you have the tools in your body to fight it,

spk_1:   10:04
which seems like a good place to bring up the vaccination.

spk_0:   10:07
Okay, now we're gonna I'm gonna put in the caveat, because this is this is our cab. Got we understand we don't We do not do politics on three B. Why we just don't we don't do it. We don't allow it. And we have a comment section where you're more than welcome to leave any non political comment that you like. And we generally approve almost all of them as long as they're not well, trying to sell something. And as long as they're not political in somehow, through a very bizarre Siri's of events, vaccines have become political, and I just My mind is a little blown by this whole thing. I understand what happened. I understand a lot about the situation, but here's the bottom line. I don't care about any of that stuff to us. Her and me. We care about talking about scientific things, which a vaccine and its effect on the human body is a scientific thing. We talk about them in scientific terms, and we try to base this on evidence that is scientifically gathered that is reproducible and that has been published in legitimate long term non vanity journals. Okay, so you know, our caveat is yes. We will be glad to discuss vaccinations with you, but from a scientific perspective, scientific point of view. And if you want to bring you the bring anti vax ing, bring the journals where the documentation is with you because if we're not doing that they were having a conversation about science. We're talking about somebody's opinion and we're not gonna do that. A pretty firm on this, cause I get really tired of of these will. Somebody said Somebody said Thanks No, that's not We're not Somebody said Somebody said, We're not doing that So now we'll go right ahead.

spk_1:   12:23
The reason I wanted to bring it in now is to point out, because that is what vaccines do. They present the signature proteins of the microbe in a way that alerts the immune system and gets the immune system to make a bunch of these memory cells so that those memory cells will be sitting around in the body long term and upon re exposure, you get a really strong, vigorous immune response that prevents you from getting ill. So when I was a kid and they were giving vaccinations, when you gave one of them, I forget it was one of the boxes. I forget which one of the boxes that give up one of the vaccinations. And if you didn't develop any kind of mark at the site of the injection, he was just eliminated with no sign at all. At first, I think, Well, maybe you didn't take and then try again, in case you were just had a bad immune system week when they gave the immunization. But if you didn't show any reaction twice in a row, they concluded you had already survived a previous exposure to the thing. And we're already protected and said, OK, you don't need this one that sometime earlier in your life you managed to survive and exposure to this germ. So it is about getting exposed to the German, a way that won't kill you and developing memory cells to it.

spk_0:   13:39
Now, one thing about vaccinations that a lot of people don't really think, But those of us who, as Children, went to well, I figure, Ah, good way of putting us. I, as a child was a military brat, which meant for us East Asia, and I got more back for stuff that, you know, no American kids just will never get vaccines for I had vaccines out My ears literally. I mean, you name it. I got the normal stuff that I got the yellow fever, the cholera, the tiefest haIf way you name it. I got it. And of course, as a cabbie, at the best part of all of those is they were not nearly as buffered as they are today. So they were a lot harder on my poor little system, and they also were not nearly as combined as they are today. Now you get a vaccine that's like five things that not then we got a shot. At a time least. I used to get four shots a week for months.

spk_1:   14:47
Gave him quite a needle phobia.

spk_0:   14:49
We did, and I was. I was like a tiger. I was like, five. And it took me years to get over that phobia of needles. Of course, the needles they were using there were a lot bigger. You know that if you look at a shot needle from the sixties, it's just it's not like what they use today.

spk_1:   15:04
Yeah, it's not a 27 anymore. Where, then?

spk_0:   15:07
No, no. It's like one of these big, huge 15 or something. They let me actually keep a few of the of the shot meet the pretty calm syringes, not the ones that they had my stuff in, obviously just gave me new ones because I was a kid. I played with him and some love mongoose. But anyway, you go right ahead.

spk_1:   15:30
So that's what the vaccinations or four. And in the absence of anti toxins, the things like tetanus. They are the only defense. Tetanus bacillus is a is a nice example because it lives in the soil practically everywhere, which means it can get into wounds of practically anyone. And heck, I was reading story last month about a kid and Canada who almost died just from a little cut on his scalp. He hadn't been vaccinated for his mom washed the wound, which helps, but apparently didn't get out quite enough because it's impossible to wash out every bacterium folks. It is not happening. Sorry, and the kid ended up contracting tetanus and was already developed enough that they very, very nearly lost him anyway. Even giving him the anti toxin an anti toxin is not a thing you're gonna have in a low medicine situation.

spk_0:   16:31
I've never heard of any prepper putting a tetanus antitoxin in there. Perhaps

spk_1:   16:36
it requires freezing, and it's a large quantity. Can you have to take a whole bunch of it? I could make anti toxin, probably if you gave me a nice strain of tetanus bacillus, a couple of rabbits, a good lab. In two months, I could make some. And once I had it, it would stay good for about 18 hours before it went bad without refrigeration. So

spk_0:   16:58
that and the bunny's

spk_1:   17:00
the money's would not be significantly hurt by the procedure. But still, they're just a little vaccine. You could meet him. You're right. I wouldn't want to eat him after that. But it's probably

spk_0:   17:12
something to do with somebody if you're not gonna eat it. Bunny is only job

spk_1:   17:18
well, in this case, make antitoxin. But anyway, my point is that the only known remedy to not dying once you get tetanus would no longer be there in a low medicine situation. So vaccines are not the most important there, even a fairly distant second to the most important. But it seemed like a nice time to bring him in because that's what they do is they train your immune system to be able to defend. And it is a long lasting defense. Absolutely. The best defense is quite clear. It's the hygiene thing which we started to talk about there and the most of the deaths of the people under five. The single biggest killer is diarrheal diseases, and the biggest killer among the diarrheal disease is the biggest mode of transmission. Is contaminated water water contaminated with human feces, usually which is actually quite easy to get. Which is why, if you look at the article attached to this story, I've got a paragraph in here where I just put in a whole bunch of links because this is why we had three b y spends so much time talking about the less appealing aspects of prepping like, How do you build a latrine? How do you make your come? Ah, composting toilet that is safe and reasonably pleasant to use. How do you build a hand wash washing station that you can put anywhere using minimal water where it's easy to you and easy to decontaminate your hands so people actually do it reliably? That's the tippy tap. And how do you purify your water? Because even if you're doing a great job. People upstream of you may not be doing a great job

spk_0:   19:00
or the fact that you may be doing a great job. And if you live in a suburb, what are all your neighbors doing? That's a big deal.

spk_1:   19:07
Yeah, I expect cities if public sewer systems failed or water systems failed, and

spk_0:   19:14
it doesn't have to be for that long of a time,

spk_1:   19:16
Yeah, uh, public hygiene would go well right into the street, shall we say, And disease transmission would start to follow very quickly thereafter. Because there's a lot of people walking around with things like hepatitis. Right now, the more obscure diseases would take longer to show up because you have to have a carrier. But there's already plenty of people wandering around with hepatitis and hepatitis A would start spreading. Pretty much media would be my guess. I'm not a physician. I am somebody who ah, studies path of physiology for a living.

spk_0:   19:48
All right, we're gonna bottom line this and say please read the article. Thank you for listening, and we'll catch you the next time.

spk_1:   19:56
What's your hands?

spk_0:   19:57
Wash your hands and your kid's hands