I managed to bite through the chaos enough to make a first projection, which is as follows.

The AI (including the human sociologists designing it) told its handlers to increase the global anxiety level and keep it up for as long as possible. This disproportional panic over a virus that is essentially a non-threat (most adverse effects seem to be absent in people with sufficient vitamin D levels) is a continuation and escalation of the previous xenophobia and paranoia efforts directed at Russia and later at China. It is unclear whether the entire thing is designed from scratch, but indications are that it was opportunistic; some threat occurred and it was utilized. There are always asteroids, sunspots, climate changes, earthquakes, diseases, killer hornets etc. you can over-inflate in media if you want to keep the populace in a constant state of fear.

The exact goals of this effort are uncertain, but large human masses are known to easily accept authoritarian leadership and surrender their freedoms and rights/privileges in such environments, and are also more intolerant of foreigners and easily goaded into “defensive” violence. This makes me expect more totalitarianism directed against the populace of the West whose standard of living will likely be reduced, because collapse of the Western economic system can neither be stopped nor reversed. Whether it is also in preparation for war, it’s hard to tell. It’s likely but not certain.