Not like this, not with social media and political divisiveness
I don't get what you're referring to. What's "not like this" describing?
Are you saying we haven't had scares like this before? I beg to differ.
We didn't need social media before the Internet. We have newspapers, radios and movie theaters to help disseminate information. Then TV came alone.
The only thing different is that it's more instantaneous and updated 24/7 now. But social networks existed in the form of face-to-face interactions. Smaller foot print, but there were still the conspiracy theorists and fear mongers who tried to use the public soap box in their communities to spread rumors and blame certain people or groups.
The Spanish Flu pandemic killed approximately 25-50 million between Feb 1918 - Apr 1920 -- almost a century earlier than COVID-19.
The 1918 Spanish flu was the first of three flu pandemics caused by H1N1 influenza A virus; the most recent one was the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
So, I stand by the comment that this is nothing new. The fact that we have idiots and jackasses that choose to politicize a disease to win a presidential election doesn't change that. Social Media did nothing to change the course of the disease. You can't protect the world from a virus for which there is no vaccine no matter how advanced your communication media might be.
San Francisco Police Officers Dec 1918:
