How do we reconcile what is happening in the world as a result of #COVID19 with the oft-quoted Jeremiah 29:11:

11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope
Jeremiah 29:11

Now, at first glance, someone may think when reading that "Okay, that seems pretty easy. It affirms what I was told earlier that God Loves Me and Has a Wonderful Plan For My Life. God's going to grant me prosperity, a life full of hope and a great future. There's no way that harm will come in my way because God's got control over everything."

Now is that what the verse actually says? Let's take a look at verses 9-14 in a more literal translation:

10"For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Jeremiah 29:10-14 (English Standard Version, emphasis added)

First of all, who was it written to?
It was a prophetic word from God to the Israelites living under captivity in Babylon. Secondly, it is talking about their deliverance, that God will in effect come to their rescue, releasing them so that they can go back to their homeland where all that was pillaged, all that was lost during the conquest will be restored. The nation would be restored as would it's relationship with the almighty. Ergo, Jeremiah was speaking to a specific group of people within his own time period about a specific thing that was going to happen there and then.

Furthermore, this prophecy was actually fulfilled in the book of Daniel:
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of theChaldeans— 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
Daniel 9:1-3

Secondly, v11 used on its own as a prooftext for the prosperity gospel just doesn't make sense with the rest of scripture which promises the opposite of a harmless, hopeful, hopeful life here on Earth:

3We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 the Holy Spirit, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, genuine love; 7by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
2 Corinthians 6:3-10 (English Standard Version)

Hence, v11 in it's proper context cannot apply to anyone who stumbles upon that verse universally; it is exclusive in meaning to chapter 29 to the Israelites living under the Babylonian captivity and doesn't apply to anyone else today directly.