I was thinking about the phrase ‘The pot calling the kettle black’. It comes from a time where cooking was done over open fires and cookware would become visibly ashy. (Fun fact: It first appears and was perhaps coined by Cervantes in Don Quixote!)
What are some other idioms that have lost their literal connection to time? What would be a good modern replacement?
Those that failed to avoid actual plagues often lived only long enough to regret it.
This was true also in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. And there were anti-vaxxers even then.