The main difference between this catastrophe and many of the others is the speed with which bad news is spreading.
We didn’t have smartphones at hand to pick up 100 times a day to double check how many people were infected. We didn’t have an easy way to access the rumours and predictions of those on PPRUNE.
Perhaps if we did the sky would have fallen harder during SARS/Swine fly/911. Perhaps things will recover like they did after those events.
The response is definitely more severe but hopefully the recovery will be just as effective.
There will still be 7 billion people on the planet and hopefully they will want to go on holidays at some stage.