Nature always has had feedback systems. Malthus has been mentioned upthread, bearing in mind he was writing in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. The Agricultural Revolution begining barely a century earlier made agriculture a little bit less labour intensive and a little more efficient in resources. A couple of hundred years on and we have come much further with industrial food production and international trade and can sustain many times the population.
When major rivers flooded many UK communities two months ago, it wasn't nature being vengeful, but humans placing their activities in high risk areas and to some extent interfering with feedback systems that make the minutae of the consequences of (relatively) extreme weather harder to predict and micromanage.
Survival of the fittest is a population level system where surviving long enough to pass your genes on is enough to keep the species going. Human values change the game for our species. Relying on our cognitive adaptability makes our unremarkable physical aptitudes a winner. We value a large range of contributions to our society, and years of accumulating knowledge and experience to pass on. The high physical investment in producing young means it is biologically desirable to survive into grandparenthood to support childrearing. The reality is that some social groups are more biologically suceptible to different illnesses and the tolls of crises such as war and natural disaster. This one focuses on weaker respiritory systems, but being a human civilisation we recognise the wider value of the individuals of our population and aim to balance their interests along with the wider social and economic impacts.
Higher population densities are convenient and efficient most of the time, but they are more suceptible to the immediate effects of natural/ biological disasters (although relief and recovery are harder to manage with low density infrastructure) Looking at the most powerful earthquakes, by far the most devestating consequences are triggered by the population density in the affected zone rather than the strength of the earthquake itself.
Booms can follow disaster. Sometimes war drives technological development going on to boost civilian access to technology. The feudal system unravelled following the population losses from Black Death. Labour shortages empowered serfs to leave in search of better pay and living conditions rather than living a localised life of near slavery for the local lord. Aside from the rights and wrongs from government, society has adapted to changed circumstances very rapidly. Businesses are adapting their models to survive or support with shortages of PPE.
I write this as someone who much more than a few decades ago in the UK, or in much of the developing world would have probably died during my first child birth. It's very easy in modern society to forget how fragile human life is.