In the grand scheme of things, sitting on top of explosives and riding into space has definite risks. I remember when the very early rockets did not get far off the pad (before the Mercury series). Yes, I remember the Baikonnur explosion (slow coming out, but in 1960), Kennedy being shot (both of them, Jack and Bobby), Soyuz 1, Apollo 1 (fire on the pad), Soyuz 11, Challenger, 9/11, Columbia, and COVID/2020, all disasters in their own way.
That we (or any country) would lose astronauts on the pad, on the way up, or on the way down, is an almost predictable result of space exploration, the sort of thing spoken about in science fiction stories as past history in a fictional context. That doesn't make any of these events less of a tragedy, a learning opportunity, or mean that they may have not been preventable. Sadly, it seems we need to be reminded of our frailties (and our Hubris) from time to time, just to get our priorities straight.
Those who launch today still take risks, and it will ever be so.
A list of Space related accidents can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents