Perhaps the most important contrast that can be made here is between the ideas about causality. When AIDS first hit hard it was gay men in coastal cities, so people quickly became comfortable with the idea that rampant decadent buttsex was the cause and the issue and that allowed them to frame the whole mess in a more comfortable way. Later it was found that the virus had been for some time percolating in the Caribbean. Many stayed stuck to the original narrative and others came up with a minor variation that decadent travelers were the cause and the spread and the only at risk. Only much later was it found that the virus started in the wilds of Africa, and by that point many had already locked in their own preferred framing and causality story.

When COVID-19 hit people saw Wuhan, the wet market there, and the virology institute as being obvious scapegoats. Seriously studying and pinpointing the origins of infectious agents often takes decades and much rigorous science, but once again a simple story was quickly set to assign blame and explain the tragedy in simple terms. Now it is common knowledge worldwide that the virus was created or accidentally caused in a lab in Wuhan even though the true inception story may be quite different and perhaps will remain unknown to us for decades. The desire for simple stories to direct blame ends up being even more powerful than the killing power of a pandemic virus. Such is the human condition.