I disagree. A little over 100 years ago, we had the H1N1 spanish flu outbreak where it's estimated 50 to 100 million people died. Ninety years later in 2009, the H1N1 pandemic arose again but since our technology was worlds better, the death toll was less than 20,000. That's a death toll of 2500 to 5000 times less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1
Back in the early 1900's you had lower quality and quantity of food, potentially cholera infested drinking water, work was a lot tougher, and if you got a severe illness like cancer or polio, you were done for. Being rich got you potentially better food and water, but life threatening illnesses don't discriminate based on class. Nowadays, our quality and quantity of food has gone so far in the other direction, that we face an obesity crisis, we don't really have to worry about drinking water being contaminated anymore, and machines continue to do more and more work for us. Diseases like polio, chickenpox, measles, and smallpox thanks to vaccinations are now so rare they might as well be extinct. Even cancer, as bad as it is, isn't necessarily a death sentence anymore.
