I was around during the 80s AIDs scare. One of the things that stuck in my mind (and it is the same with COVID) is that they exaggerated the risk. They knew early on that it was gay men and intravenous drug users that were most at risk, yet they pretended that everyone had the same risk levels. The consequences of this was that scarce health resources were used for populations that basically had no risk, and those populations that were most at risk had to fight for those same resources.