The context you seem to be missing is that, unlike death itself, COVID-19 has been with the human race for only a few months. Its introduction into our populat

The context you seem to be missing is that, unlike death itself, COVID-19 has been with the human race for only a few months. Its introduction into our population was an event that we observed more or less directly. We can learn from that, and (motivated by that event's total cost) we can try to do better next time (and something similar will almost certainly happen again). Can't quite say the same about death itself.