We survived SARs and a number of world wars, but for the new generation when its all about them and they perceive the odds against them, then they just collapse like a house of cards.
Yep, 50 million of them ~1919
If you haven't done so after my last emotional outpouring, please take time to read this young nurse's story on this dedicated site.* It spells out the bravery of the time, an era when they must have started to know the extreme danger they were in but carried on nursing anyway. We know so much more now but the enemy is subtle. It has evolved. It is designed to kill us, it has no other purpose - other than its skilled determination to modify itself and reproduce.
*
https://heatonhistorygroup.org/2016/...gg-remembered/
I used to take Gaia and the Earth goddess with a pinch of salt. Fun, but no real science involved. How wrong I was. Some of the Earth's defences equal the realms of science fiction. It's as though Homo sapiens have really T'd off its defence systems and something is working hard to destroy the temporarily successful species. Temporary is measured in hundreds of thousands of years.
Nonsense? Now that carbon dating is so breathtakingly accurate, we hope, we find that our species has wiped out the advanced species, along with the flora and fauna of easily definable continents, like say, Madagascar. We have only the remnants of at least six other Human species. The point? Whether or not a virus is a living entity is an almost philosophical question. Most mechanisms with this power have a purpose. To analyse what's going on takes us into theological and metaphysical argument. Our, and other nations' wellbeing is being affected by a sub-microscopic quasi-life form. Sir Fred Hoyle beat a lone drum about these entities for a lot of his life. Right now, some of his ideas are making me feel very uncertain about our future.
It's perhaps comforting we're seeing a united, international, fight against this adversity. In itself, an oddly science fiction scenario.