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>It has been one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

By percentage of global population, I beg to differ:

It also overwhelmingly killed the very elderly, an age category which didn't even exist at the times of most of those other pandemics in the list.

> an age category which didn't even exist at the times of most of those other pandemics in the list

They exist now though? And they died, so we must count them among the dead. Nothing else makes sense here.

There have always been 80 and 90 year olds in society.

False.

Sure, "didn't even exist" was an exaggeration, but you can't deny that it was a much, much smaller age category before.