We see scenes in which resources such as food begin to be distributed inequitably, and people begin to exploit their positions by withholding food in exchange for other resources, including coerced sex.
After the news is made public on national television, raising the category of the crisis to critical, citizens begin fighting for resources and even exploiting the chaos to loot a supermarket. Of note, when infected citizens are forcibly moved to camps, elements of compassion and cohesion develop among camp residents; the most violent reactions come from and are directed toward authorities managing the site.

As more citizens contract the disease, the normal functioning of society is upturned: strict government quarantines of the infected are imposed by use of physical force. In recent times, more nuanced views about how societies respond to epidemics can be found in films, especially showing how extreme reactions tend to not be intrinsically associated with the disease itself but rather to be a way of dealing with top-down repression impinging on freedoms and liberties.
The connection between disease and deteriorating social morality came from actual observations of contemporaries at the time, for example, the views of Giovanni Villani (Nuova Cronica) and Giovanni Boccaccio (Decameron).