No century has gone viral quite the way this one has.
There have been worse plagues than COVID-19. The 14th-century Black Death wiped out more than a third of Europe’s population. The Spanish flu of 1918-19 killed an estimated 50 million. COVID-19’s global death toll to date, 300,000-plus and rising, remains low by comparison.
To put tragedies into perspective is not to trivialize the less severe. Nor is death the only measure of severity. The vast global economy threatened with ruin by COVID-19 has no historical precedent; likewise the suffering its collapse would cause. Suffering itself has many levels. Instances chronicled by Spa magazine this month, well short of tragic, will still require, and perhaps generate, large stores of that perennially saving human resource — resilience.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.