As a kid, world history was fascinating to me. I would hear about world wars, pandemics, the Great Depression, and disasters that swept across nations and around the world. Each time I would study some great and terrible event I would think, “I am so glad that doesn’t happen anymore.” In my mind, our world was too advanced for any of those kinds of catastrophes to happen again. It wasn’t just that they don’t happen, they can’t happen.

Then came 2020 and our world was engulfed in a pandemic unlike anything we had seen in a century. We watched infection rates and death tolls rise. We watched shu...