I think the point is that we don't fight it "natually", we fight it with medicine and vaccines. We also have access to clean water which, if we did get malaria, would prevent us from dying from rapid dehydration(which in my understanding is the primary cause of death from malaria.) This is the argument against the caveman diets...

The primary reason we don't die from malaria is none of the above: it is mosquito abatement via intentional habitat destruction and copious use of effective pesticides. Large portions of the US used to be malaria country: not a spe mof it is now, and if there was a malaria outbreak in a US suburb we would wring our hands about the consequences for about five minutes and then dump enough chemicals on that subdivision to save an African country.

Ditto Europe, by the way.

I believe the strains of malaria that existed in North American and Europe were far weaker than the African varieties, though

Medicine is a fine way to treat things like infectious disease, but our western use of it is particularly useless (and often harmful) at treating long term "lifestyle diseases" -- stuff like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Prevention is far more effective, and diets that consist mostly of "food as grown" with minimal processing and alteration are good prevention.

> we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives.

Actually, an awful lot of us do. I see those fucking Anopheles mosquitoes on a regular basis, especially if I venture a bit north from here.

> If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time.

Actually, out of the 225 million cases of malaria per year, there are only about 1 million deaths.

I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I haven't gotten malaria yet because of public-health measures like draining swamps, because of cypermethrin on the walls, because of DEET on my legs and head, because of sleeping under a mosquito net or in a room without entrances for mosquitoes, because of sleeping during the day, and because I have enough leisure time to swat the mosquitoes that do land on me.

I disagree with your statement about dying in a short period of time if you catch malaria. I grew up in a country with a high malaria rate (Papua New Guinea). I caught malaria several times and didn't die. Malaria is a curable disease, all though it is evolving against the current cures.

It's definitely curable. My hypothetical was based on the assumption that treatment was not given to show that we actually have not evolved defenses against the virus.

It's not a virus, it's a protozoan parasite, Plasmodium falciparum.