Governments of the old world , terrified that people would discover diseases actually cause death, decided the best solution was to just call a big time out on the virus.
Survivors from the end of days called this period ‘Lockdown’ and apparently the first one didn’t work so well, since the virus still killed old and frail people anyway. It also had a small side-effect of burning their economies to the ground, destroying people’s liberties, their mental health, and people kept dying from other diseases, which confused governments, since they had obviously called a time-out. Some diseases just don’t play by the rules!
While records are lost to us, it seems they tried a few of these, and each time they worked just as badly as the last time. It seems governments of the old world didn’t have access to things like ‘Logic’ and ‘Maths’.
Lockdowns seemed really good at pissing people off though, so governments just recommended people lighten up a bit and get involved in more heists.