In that context, I would be a bit weirded out, but happy! As a creator, writing a realistic story that comes true at a later time is pretty gratifying, I find (on the creative side. I see how it could be disturbing to see one's own pessimistic vision come true, especially if the creator thought of their work as a bit over the top pessimistic).
Yep, many diseases, but I'm not sure the general public is thinking of it. Just looking at how difficult it is to get older people to get flu shots...
Also, I did not want to spoil too much (and also write a too long mssage), but there are more coincidences. The 'one too much' was just a few days ago. A small thing, but disturbing. I was reading this discussion where a middle-aged person was complaining about Canadians abroad still allowed to come back to Canada. This is a common (and not silly) complain here right now, but that specific message was kind of the summary of it in its worst flavor. There was a mixture of reasonable health concerns,but also interprovincial racism, debatable vision on patriotism ('these Canadians who hate their country enough to leave it for vacation should never be allowed back even after the crisis' bla bla), religious obscurantism, and superstitions. HUGE deja vu feeling. Yep, I wrote the same kind of talk for one of my characters. I was shocked, the 5 elements I read in that person's message are there in the talk I wrote. It's an eerie feeling. Almost made me feel I was losing my mind.
I know it's just that I'm very analytical, and that it's just the result of me using my 40 years of observing, comparing and compiling people's behaviors, and my training in biology. But if I have a hard time myself believing how close the recent events are to my story, how can I expect my readers to keep that distance?
So yes, right now, it's mostly that I'm not comfortable myself. the weirdest thing is that I have a post-apo story ready in a corner, and I thought, what if I had started this one first instead of Moonover Marsh? I could have used the current events to flesh it out, make it way worse than IRL, make myself terribly uncomfortable, make the readers uncomfortable.. BUT that would be a WIN for that other story, because that's the point! That's not the point of MM
Yes, I understand that. I can even see how I would not be a bad candidate to write such a story because I have epidemiology knowledge. But that's not what I wanted for my story at all, so I have the feeling it's going to be difficult to be good at it (and possibly even, respectful. Not that I would do anything disrespectful, but it's difficult to be on point when there is no enthusiasm..)
At this point, I think I'm going to go for a re-write, not to remove the disease entirely, but to make it more of a 'one event in the middle of others'.
It was very helpful to read all your comments. It made me realize that I still want my story to go on.
It also made me realize that I'm probably right in thinking it's going to be hard for readers to distance themselves entirely from the current events when reading, but according to you, it may not be a very bad thing.
Which means I now have to find the right balance between what I need to keep of the epidemic to maintain the structure of the story, and what I have to remove to avoid drastically changing the tone of my story.