Modern medicine, advanced technology, and greater education & awareness are here today, yet history shows the utter vulnerability of humanity. Indeed, not just history, but the current world-wide pandemic with the Coronavirus, causes humanity to view itself with the most basic philosophical lens: avoid death and choose life.

While researchers, scientists, and world leaders are working hard to discover vaccines and contain the virus, the virus is working hard to do what it does naturally: reproduce.

Thankfully people today have some control over the prevention and spreading of the disease, but it's common to discover a high number of casualties or infected people by the time it has already spread quickly and pervasively.

Here is a look at some examples of such cases, some of which were the deadliest influenza pandemics in the fairly recent past:

• Known as the "largest nineteenth-century epidemic of influenza, called ‘the Russian epidemic’" in Medical Science Monitor, this pandemic took the lives of 1 million people starting 1889.

• 1918-1919, "Spanish Flu" H1N1 virus caused 20-50 million deaths worldwide.

• 1957-1958 & 1968 "Asian Flu" (H2N2 virus) and (H3N2 virus) 1–4 million deaths. 

• 2009–2010 H1N1 virus 100,000 – 400,000 deaths in the first year.

Although current statistics show that COVID-19 infections and fatalities are continuing to climb, the hope and striving for remedies and solution will never dispel the choice for life. In reference to a story of King Solomon, "This too shall pass" (Israel Folktale Archives, 126).