Mary McNamara: Flesh-eating apocalyptic films and shows didn't prepare us for this pandemic's horror

We should have been much better prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm not talking about on a federal or local level - although President Donald Trump's firing of the pandemic experts and ignoring the medical community during early weeks, not to mention California's decision to stop funding a bunch of mobile hospitals - certainly contributed to the crisis.

No, I'm talking about each and every one of us, bathed as we have been in decades' worth of apocalyptic tales, many of them centered on illness and/or governmental ineptitude. In fact, there's one on Apple TV right now, "See," in which the world's population has been all but wiped out by a pandemic that has left nearly every survivor, including Jason Momoa, blind.

Blind. Get it?

Whether by recognizable virus ("Outbreak," "Contagion,"