That's weird.  I know three people who died from the imaginary virus, and one who it gave a heart attack to.  All people in risk groups.  Also as a hospital data professional I was in part responsible for building the dashboards that tracked the progress of the imaginary disease.

Nuance is important.  There is no doubt that the greater contagion was the mind virus you mention.  But the design of that is to polarize us into extreme groups so we can be easily controlled.

When I was a kid you could also divide the population into two groups.  There were the "popular" kids who knew what to wear, and what music was currently cool, and what Saturday Night Live punchline should be currently said.  And then there was the other group, who was also aware of all those things but rejected them. We (I was in the latter group) made sure NOT to wear those clothes, made fun of the music and mocked the Saturday Night Live one liners.

It took me a while to realize we were really all playing the same game.