You know that thing called "Locked-in Syndrome"?

[plimsoll]

12. It's not repeating if it never stopped.

It's a continual theme in the human psyche. Everyone is susceptible to suggestion to some degree, some people are easily deceived others take more effort. Social media allows people to share and magnify their misconceptions broadly. So the only real difference between now and then is that the threshold of infections is much lower because we're swimming in a sea of misconception.

And truth be told both siderism is a symptom of this. We think it media bias. It's the response the press has to horrendous stories, they look for comparisons and try to be "even handed." One side has figured out how to weaponize this wetware bug in the press.