I don’t think this is the case. Miasma theory persisted until the second half of the 19th century. Alcoholic beverages clearly didn’t stop the Black Death, leprosy, syphilis, or tuberculosis.
On the contrary, beer and wine are good at destroying pathogens. But it’s not instantaneous, it may take some time.
Interesting article in the Scientific American:
Do you have a cite for that? As a general rule, alcohol poisons yeast as well as it poisons everything else, which is why it’s really difficult to get anything much higher than 20% for beer regardless of strain of yeast. Liquor uses heat distillation to concentrate the alcohol post-fermentation. Beers (and wines) that exceed 20% use fractional freezing (AKA freeze distillation).
I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I’ve never heard about these advanced strains, and I have a hard time figuring out how you would suddenly have these beers show up without decades of experimental breeding to accomplish this via fermentation alone. It takes many generations to breed for specific traits.
As I’ve mentioned before, a friend of the family was told, while in the French Foreign Legion, that if he got sick again he’d be put on report. Because the wine was for drinking. The water wasn’t.