I can attest to that. When I went shopping the other week and the shelves were empty here in Canada, I said I didn't see anything like this since late 80's Communist Romania.
However, I want to draw your attention to something that, at least in my opinion, is different this time.
In the Communist times, at least in the late 70's and then throughout the 80's in Romania, even though it was a police state and you knew you had to be careful what you said, social relationships were OK, people got along and were trying to help each other, the society was somewhat normal, it had a common enemy. What I notice now is something that goes a bit deeper, it seems to destroy the society, much more similar to what I think happened in Nazi Germany in the 30's, the level of fear that TPB have managed to push down on everybody is incredible and it seems to break the society even further than their last few tricks, such as the gender pronouns hysteria and refugee crisis or global emergency, which were also pushed down from the top if you think about it, through the same structures.