The problem is categorical declamations of certain knowledge

An interesting article and topic, Over 95 percent of the world's population has health problems -- with over a third having more than 5 ailments from The Lancet.

There is no doubt that global health is a vast and complex issue with an enormous importance and impact. At the same time, while acknowledging that to be true, it is also responsible to maintain some skepticism about the quality of data with which we are working, the models we are using to make forecasts, and the motivations of those doing the research. In all these respects, global morbidity is very similar to global climate. Important, complex, consequential and yet our knowledge frontiers are far too limited.

And advocacy/self-interested confirmation bias are not inconsequential gremlins in our efforts to push back the knowledge frontiers.

Just one in 20 people worldwide (4·3%) had no health problems in 2013, with a third of the world's population (2·3 billion individuals) experiencing more than five ailments, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2013, published in The Lancet.

Moreover, the research shows that, worldwide, the proportion of lost years of healthy life (disability-adjusted life years; DALYS [1]) due to illness (rather than death) rose from around a fifth (21%) in 1990 to almost a third (31%) in 2013.

Only 5% optimally healthy? That is wonderfully alarming, a call to action. But is it meaningfully real? Even from this summary article, there is reason to be skeptical.

Its not that we should cease efforts to roll back the knowledge frontier or refrain from publicising incremental and only partially understood knowledge gains. Those activities are just part of the natural process of acquiring knowledge.

No, this is simply a call for skepticism and a caution that categorical declamations about complex processes are usually deceitful and/or wrong.