> One man's cherry-picking is another man's apples-to-apples comparison. If you want to compare the base mortality of two diseases in different times, you do need to correct for differences in lifestyle and healthcare standards, otherwise the comparison is meaningless.
Is it though?
I get that if you're talking about how much money something cost in 1918 and how much it cost today you'd want to take inflation into account otherwise everything in 1918 is "free" (or 90%+ discounted) compared to today.
But when you're talking about lives and deaths, well, I mean I don't think a life back then is worth any more or less than a life today. On a population adjusted basis a single death "counts" more insofar as there were fewer people around so a death is a larger percentage of the world population. But it doesn't inherently have less value.
Is it though?
I get that if you're talking about how much money something cost in 1918 and how much it cost today you'd want to take inflation into account otherwise everything in 1918 is "free" (or 90%+ discounted) compared to today.
But when you're talking about lives and deaths, well, I mean I don't think a life back then is worth any more or less than a life today. On a population adjusted basis a single death "counts" more insofar as there were fewer people around so a death is a larger percentage of the world population. But it doesn't inherently have less value.