It’s the flu when no one you know has it, and it’s the plague when someone you know does.
Main point is: just-the-flu seems to evaporate once a social network has first hand contact with the disease.
It’s understandable on some level because some mild cases really are “just the flu”. But the severe cases are bad.
If the infected died in a pool of blood like Ebola, it would’ve been taken seriously
Instead it has highly variable symptoms, asymptomatic carriers, long incubation time
Stealth boosts transmissibility