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As an example, John Scalzi did the covid thing in "The Kaiju Preservation Society". It came up by page two or three of the book IIRC. That immediately alerted me that this may not be the book for me. But luckily, not a big deal was made of it and it was not central to the plot and thus ruinous of the book. Just a casual mention. But so close to the start of the book - that was a bit of a slip-up by the author I think.
I did enjoy the book however. Of similar concern to me was the they/them-ness of one of the characters. I don't really care what people call themselves. But being an older individual, I associate they/them with plural, and it shocks me right out of the story to see an individual referred to in the plural. My brain can't help but think, "Doesn't this author know the basics of the English language?"
Every time I ran into a covid or a they/them reference in the book, it pulled me right out of the imaginative world of the story, and into the things happening in the real world. There goes the escapism of the story, and I'm right back into current events. For me, this destroys the story. If done too often, or too preachy, the book gets abandoned.
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