I am actually blown away by the hateful and bigoted nature of the comments on a site like Bloomberg.com! Didn't expect it to attract those kinds of readers.
People often forget how their ancestors lived. They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. Of course, now it's a first world continent. Through hard work, introspect, and sacrifice "western culture & people" have become the greatest rags to riches story in history (so far). China, India, & Africa will one day have their own.
There's no need to single out Europe. The Black Plague is believed to have started in central Asia and also depopulated India and Muslim regions including Mecca.
Nor is there need to go so far back in time. The British were in such poor health that 40% of their military volunteers for the Boer War and the First World War were unfit, in part because of malnutrition and diet deficiencies like rickets. Much of this was due to poverty, and a belief by the rich in laissez-faire capitalism, where issues like clean water, working sewage, and uncontaminated foods were something best left to the markets, not the government.
Much of the gains were seem to have been through social democracy in one form or other, with at least government oversight if not outright control of water, food, health services, etc. It probably helps they haven't continued their long held tradition of invading each other every generation or so. I can't say though I'm fond of the 'sacrifice' that is the White Man's Burden, or the hard work that is conquering and ruling other countries.
Personally, I think Japan and (South) Korea also have impressive rags-to-riches stories, especially considering Japanese seclusion until the mid-1800s. (Japan of course modeling itself on Imperial Germany, and hoping to keep itself out of the the hands Western imperialism, as befell China and India.)
Of course, it's also possible to rank "riches" by GDP, in which case Qatar is the clear winner, since it became a high income economy only since the 1950s.
> They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague.
For Yersinia pestis (the black death) public sanitation is not a factor... Waste management also often wasn't as bad as people imagine today, the stories of the worst, not average sanitations are what are most commonly related about the past (why, shock value of course).
Yeah but we get the point - cholera was the appropriate disease to cite, many outbreaks caused when the sewage people dumped in the streets or rivers seeped into groundwater supplies and wells.
FWIW it seems to be one guy posting thousands of racist comments in all caps. Although without proper moderation, all it takes is one guy to drown out everyone else.
It's very interesting because I was struck that the western world has its own from of a public health epidemic caused by cultural standards: sedentary working and obesity.
I'm unsure what meaning you're attaching to "public health".
Here are en.Wikipedia, a UK Government site, and a training programme from the US CDC about their Public Health Prevention Service which talks about Obesity.
Sedentary working probably isn't the cause of obesity. It takes a significant amount of exercise to lose weight. There are also plenty of people in third world countries that have relatively sedentary jobs.
