That would be extremely likely. The laws recently passed would point to that.
There are several things moving, here. For starters, there really is a bad run of Influenza-A going around. I had it last week and it took out our whole maintenance department for nearly a week. Even made my cat sick (inb4 toots). So I suspect there is some interest in analyzing the performance of these contingency measures against a real viral outbreak - and corona just allows us to play pretend like there is something really deadly going around while assessing public reaction.
It's also a good time to fuck the federal reserve over while maybe a few celebrities and politicians take the opportunity to die. An interesting thing to point out is that we see our lives as only one. When a doctor declares you dead, all criminal investigations against the identity you hold end. This is a rather convenient feature and presents an opportunity for those who can live through death, so to speak. We don't typically think of death as a means of escaping justice, but it is a logical play to make for those who don't particularly need to be alive to remain here.
Of course - there are now people at the airports asking who the hell you are and what you think you're doing trying to fly outside the country.
The … Plan to trigger a global pandemic (real or purely imagined) may not have been all that intelligent on second thought….. But it's too late now.
As a final note - many observant will remember the point of White Squall wasn't the storm, but the question over whether or not the storm was ever real by the inquiry - white squalls are a thing of myth and legend.