[Tchocky]

One hand - Pandemics are wonderful news outlet panic-fodder. What you don't know could KILL YOU. Tune in after sports.
It's in the interest of news orgs to make this run and run. Not so sure about pharma, they came out of this looking pretty awful, by my recollection.

Other hand - This flu was killing people in ways we hadn't been seeing very often. It was infecting the young and healthy, not killing them, but these things mutate and evolve. This wasn't your normal flu. It wasn't more deadly than standard flu, because it was hitting less vulnerable people. That's what made it interesting.

So yeah, rather large broad-brush reaction to a nuanced issue. After the hubbub has died down it seems we're all pretty disappointed to still be surrounded by coworkers, and that post-acoughpalyptic wasteland ain't a-coming.