The following quote, which reflects cynicism and that has sadly some application nowadays, is attributed to Joseph Staline1, a former leader of the Soviet Union who was "a cold, calculating, patient and inexorable man"2: "The death of a man is a Ị 1 Born on December 21,1879 in Gori, Georgia. General Secretary of the Community Part of the ■ Soviet Union (April 3,1922 - March 5, 1953). Leader of the Soviet Union (January 21,1924 - March 5,1953). Leader of the government (May 6,1941 - March 5,1953). Died on March 5,1953 in Moscow, Soviet Union. 2 Gerard Filion, « Le dieu est mort» (God is Dead), Le Devoir (Quebec, Canada), March 6,1953, at I page 3 (translated from French by Sébastien Lafrance]. ị 3 Reported, for example, in Daniel Dayan (ed.), La terreur spectacle - Terrorisme et television, Ị Brussels, De Boeck Publisher, 2015, at page 256. 4 The Online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "Pandemic" as follows: "an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population", see online: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pandemic. 5 Charles Ornstein, « No, President Trump, the Coronavirus Is Nothing Like H1N1 Swine Flu Either », ProPublica, March 19, 2020, see online: https://www.propublica.org/artide/no- president-trump-the-coronavirus-is-nothing-like-hlnl-swine-flu-either. 6 World Health Organization, Coronavữus disease 2019 (COVID-19) - Situation Report - 46, \ March 6,2020, at page 2. tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."3 Many websites show in real-time the ị rampant evolution of the COVĨD19 virus on the planet as well as the number of victims who succumbed to this killer virus. These websites reduce somehow the lives of thousands human beings to a bare statistic. Even though at the time of writing these lines the virus has not caused "the death of millions", it remains still true that ị we are all witnessing a massive human tragedy. On March 11,2020 the World Health I Organization ("WHO") declared the COVID-19 epidemic to be a pandemic.4 It is not, ị indeed, the first pandemic of the 21st century: on June 11, 2009 WHO declared the A(H1N1) virus to be a pandemic. However, the biggest difference between these two viruses lies in its mortality rate5: 0,02% for the A(H1N1) virus and from 3 to 4% for the j COVID-19 virus6, and nothing tells us at this time that this percentage will remain I stable, hoping obviously that it will decrease as soon as possible.