(So, I'm nearly done writing this wall-of-text of mine when I notice your link, Kot. I watched. OMG! Woa. I'm kind of glad I saw it now and not when I first started playing back in 1990, but I love it now in a cringing kind of gamer love, hehe).
Yeah, even the Spanish Flu gave rise to it's own pop culture:
"In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza."
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/And of course the 1665 Great Plague of London (Bubonic plague) "Ring around the Rosy"
Back to the Spanish Flu;
"Those who were lucky enough to avoid infection had to deal with the public health ordinances to restrain the spread of the disease. The public health departments distributed gauze masks to be worn in public. Stores could not hold sales, funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some towns required a signed certificate to enter and railroads would not accept passengers without them. Those who ignored the flu ordinances had to pay steep fines enforced by extra officers (Deseret News). Bodies pilled up as the massive deaths of the epidemic ensued. Besides the lack of health care workers and medical supplies, there was a shortage of coffins, morticians and gravediggers (Knox). The conditions in 1918 were not so far removed from the Black Death in the era of the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages."
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/The chaos of the 2009-2012 years would have been near black hole-ish in force, Lone-Eagle leading to Re-Education centers only to be followed by one out of every four people dying from VITAS, then magic. With the Spanish Flu, one of the reasons (one of several) that it hit the US so hard was because much the medical community were over-seas for the war, "the medical students were left to care for the sick. Third and forth year classes were closed and the students assigned jobs as interns or nurses (Starr,1976)." ibid. Luckily 2010 US wasn't in a war (Ghost Dance war hadn't started), so hospitals would have been staffed-as-normal for the most part.
I would point out that medical science is/was far more advanced in 2010 than 1918 medical science...but VITAS killed around 8 times as many people as the Spanish Flu...so a lot of good the medical advances did...which is I would point out how much better medical science is/was but instead will only point out that I almost pointed it out, hehe.
I definitely would say that pop culture, during 2010 (or 2010 - 2011 if VITAS followed normal flu emergence patterns) would have stopped most large media productions; If the director didn't die then there's a good chance the producer, editor, executive-to-green-light-final-film, or lead actor(s) would have...each postponing release. Same with music, etc. Concerts, movie theaters, live performances, all would have been canceled in order to stop spread...but TV would have chugged right along (save for the stations/operations that were hit particularly hard and didn't have enough living staff to keep things working). Air Travel would have been halted save in the most extreme circumstances (military/official/government use only, recent Icelandic volcano halting Euro air travel is a great example of the effects of this...only it would have been global). Etc. Effectively by the end of the ordeal, 1/4 of everything could be closed because of the population loss. A quarter of hospitals, public schools, etc, could be closed with surviving medical personnel, teachers, students diverted to the 3 other facilities (who also lost 1/4 of their people). The gaps would close in other industries as well. The effects would be felt for long after, but within a year of the final deaths of VITAS the projects that had been put on hold would be released, with new "now what do we do, who can we cast, what directors are still alive" projects being started.
I would be interesting to figure out what would happen to unemployment rates, the unemployed would be able to step in and fill the jobs (at all levels and sectors of the economic range), but would businesses fail as well?
Sorry for any strange ramblings, VITAS is exceptionally interesting but also trying to keep in on topic with the post as well.
PS...does this means that Madonna is the actual starting point/emergent source for Goblin Rock?
