With this in mind, it probably pays to gain some perspective from the past - and the last great pandemic to hit the world. This, of course, was the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people. And if you want to understand more about that pandemic a very good book to read is John Barry's The Great Influenza The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.
Barry's 462 page book is an exhaustive account...
