Another way to look at this is that if the Black Death had broken out in 2019, we’d have expected the excess mortality to be pretty close to zero (in truth some

Another way to look at this is that if the Black Death had broken out in 2019, we’d have expected the excess mortality to be pretty close to zero (in truth some remote regions with poor access to antibiotics still experience it, but it’s essentially a non-issue in the modern world). Which is to say, comparing deaths across centuries is hard. It’s hard to say how many people COVID would have killed without oxygen and intubation in the time period of the Black Plague. That it killed as many as it did even given our medical advances may indicate that it is in some absolute sense much worse, not better.