“This virus kills 1 in 3 people, and it has an infection rate of….” is how the news broadcasts starts when you wake up.
Your move, writer.
One direction plays it as dark comedy: the character mutes the TV because they're more worried about being late to work, and the horror comes from how quickly the unthinkable becomes background noise — a satire on numbness and denial.
Another leans into intimate drama: instead of showing mobs or panic, stay in one kitchen, one family deciding whether to call grandma, whether to keep the kids home from school — small domestic choices carrying the full weight of the crisis.
A third could twist expectations entirely: the broadcast is playing in an empty house, no one there to hear it, and the story becomes a quiet mystery about where everyone went — dread built through absence rather than chaos.
You might also try the wry angle: the virus turns out to be laughably mundane in symptoms, and the real story is society's wildly disproportionate reaction.
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