It's amazing that the script rarely changes. You could change the date and replace 'swine flu' with 'COVID-19' and it would fit perfectly.
My favorite part of the COVID drama was the "science" strategy. If you didn't obediently believe everything you were told, you were a science-denier, a conspiracy theorist even. Its funny because when I went to science school, part of the very definition of science was that you question everything in search of the truth.
If we apply the same metrics through out history, we have these famous science denials:
- Heroin! Good for coughs: "Finding it to be five times more effective—and supposedly less addictive—than morphine, Bayer began advertising a heroin-laced aspirin in 1898, which they marketed towards children suffering from sore throats, coughs, and cold."
- The doctor who realized that washing your hands after dissecting a corpse and before moving on to delivering a baby actually prevented infections. Before that many thought the notion to be poppycock.
- The blasphemers who believed that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. They actually believed that all the celestial bodies revolved around the earth. "Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun"
- And of course those that dared suggest the moon was not actually made out of cheese as Walt Disney had so boldly told us for many years
- There are many more, but you get the idea.