Personally, I think the whole thing went off the rails in 2020 when the NCAA and all the professional sports leagues shut down indefinitely in March. That probably did more to facilitate a public panic than anything else -- since this was a step none of these sports leagues took even during World War II.
We could almost track this nonsense by the hour here on FR back then.
I just remember the sinking feeling I had when the first stories came out, and my first thought was, “So, this is how they’re going to get Trump.”