This take a particularly unique type of stupid. Deaths are the most coarse measurement of what epidemic diseases do to human populations. The decreasing death trends were due to medicine getting better at keeping victims if disease alive but did nothing to relieve the life long damage done by these infections By ignoring measures of Morbididty the author tries to make the case that the slaughterhouse that is the "natural world" was getting better all by itself and was soon to enter a nirvana where infectious disease was a thing of the past. Hardly the case. However with China reported another outbreak of plague, bringing to 7 the total numbers of countries reporting cases this year we are soon to get a front and center view of what epidemic disease looks like once again.