if you want to buy into the fear porn narrative, it's evolved, like a deadly virus does. The virus is, in fact, alive like that in the fear porn.
so here it is: supposedly evil someone else made an evil virus that only targeted . . . some type. And that virus was billed by trickster clowns as being against the hated 'some other type' and they let the evil people over there hear "Muh hee hee we have a virus that targets the evil so and so's". And that baited the people over there who thought "I gottsszzz ta get me some of that there evil" and a wringing of hands. And they stole the virus.
But the virus was really targeted to them (so the fear porn goes) and it got out, maybe by accident and now it's rampaging across the landscape.
But there could be very many other reasons for people getting sick all at once with respiratory ailments.
Heavy water steam from plasma might give a radioactive steam that if that is what the clouds were everyone who goes out in it, or gets hit by that as rain, is going to have an unknown effect, perhaps a radiation burn in their lungs from that kind of mist.
who knows.
but it is the fear of it that is worse if the 'bug' isn't in your area.
the fear of it and then the over use of cleaning supplies that release chemicals that harm the respiratory track and make you much more susceptible to infection.
don't be afraid of it.
take precautions.
read the cleaning product labels.
follow directions.
If you use those products you might consider a mask while doing it.
also if you smell a bad blend of chemicals in a supermarket, from inexperienced foreign help doing bad things with cleaning supplies . . . don't stand there and breath it in.
some people when they smell bad chemicals breath in a great big dose, almost as a sick suggestion from an old movie. The correct response : exhale and cover and remove yourself form that place, and perhaps inform the store manager.