It's been that way for years in many Asian countries.
Where I live, we had years of serious flu in which millions (about 50% of the local population) were infected and not less than 10% of them died.
In these years, I personally had to stay in bed for about 10 days (usually 1 to 3) with very high fever before my brain synthesised the proper ant-virus in my blood.
But in those years, no one talked about a pandemic, not even an epidemic!
This year, at most 1% only of the local population are said to be infected but the local media insists that we live a pandemic (I guess, they mean the world lives it, not us).
So, I bet that the media in every country in the world (with no exceptions!!!) is also instructed to convince the people the same story (which evolves with time as it was done for AIDS), I hear daily.
By whom those audio/visual media around the world (claimed being in totally different camps) are instructed on a daily basis, God only knows