The sad truth is that in some places this still happened in 2020. I work with some school districts that spent all spring handing out packets to parents every other week because they don't have reliable internet or a device. These happen to be in poor urban areas but this is true in rural areas as well.
I think the bad thing in 1990 would have been that almost no one had access to the internet yet. So working from home and having school or university from home would have been much more difficult than it is today. On the otherside international travelling was not so common as it is today. So the spreading of the corona virus around the globe would have been much slower than it happened last year. Also people seemed to be more conservative back in the days and would have followed more easily the government safety rules than they are doing today.