COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic (December 2019 - ) is a worldwide pandemic brought about by the spread of the "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" family of viruses. It brought society to a near standstill in the early months of 2020. The Other Wiki goes into far more detail about this pandemic than we could ever hope to manage.

It was inevitable that films would be made about this significant chapter in global history, in part because a small group of people enduring an extended stay in their own homes is about the only scenario it's safe and logistically possible to actually shoot right now. But did the results have to start arriving while we're all still stuck in this nightmare?

—A.A. Dowd, The A.V. Club, "The star-powered COVID drama Locked Down is nearly as annoying as, well, lockdown"

This page is about the pandemic's effect on popular culture.

Works where the COVID-19 pandemic plays a major role include:

Film

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm claims the pandemic was Borat's fault.
Songbird, produced by Michael Bay, is set In a World that has been under lockdown for four years because of "COVID-23".

Literature

Averted by Stephen King when he changed the setting of his 2021 novel Billy Summers from 2020 to 2019 so that it could take place on a cruise ship.

Live-Action TV

Medical dramas and medical comedies of the early 2020s, including The Good Doctor and Grey's Anatomy, made repeated mentions of the pandemic.

Video Games

In Hitman 3, Carl Ingram, one of 47's targets in the Dubai level, makes mention of the pandemic. This Kotaku article takes note of the apparent complacency of people in-game towards the pandemic, with next to no effort done towards social distancing and vaccination especially in levels such as Berlin and the aforementioned Dubai.

Web Original

An edited ad for a fictional Girl of the Year displayed a character wearing a track suit, bob haircut and wielding a semi-automatic pistol, while defiantly violating face mask guidelines, as a personification of the "Karen" stereotype. This provoked criticism from Mattel subsidiary American Girl, who took umbrage to the use of their name and trade dress, stating that they were "disgusted" by a post from brand strategist Adam Padilla under the online persona "Adam the Creator", and "are working with the appropriate teams at American Girl to ensure this copyright violation is handled appropriately". Boing Boing, however, expressed doubts over the merits of American Girl's proposed legal action against the "Karen" parodies, citing the Streisand Effect, though it has also noted the debate on whether the satirical intent of the parody advertisement is protected by law.
When the pandemic first began, several posters on 4chan (mostly American ones) ran with the idea of personifying the virus as a standard anime-styled Chinese girl (as they are wont to do); many of them at the time were apparently under the impression that the pandemic was either nothing serious or would blow over quickly enough to be a funny memory. As the pandemic approached its second complete year as (of November 2021), the frequency of searches mentioning her tapered off fairly quickly, and posts about her or the pandemic became decidedly disturbing in nature - and then, in what many consider typical 4chan fashion, she became a sort of figurehead among the more racist segments of the userbase.
UrinatingTree frequently alludes to "Corona-chan" in his commentary videos on sports, which is naturally impacted by the pandemic.