I decided to trace back the spread of information around the coronavirus as perceived by a reasonably well-informed American. It’s an exercise in seeing at what point it seemed obvious that this US was at risk, why we didn’t react earlier, and why we have so much trouble taking slow-moving disasters seriously.
Jan 10 – First NYT article about mysterious “Wuhan Coronavirus” is published, but little is known, including whether human-human transmission is possible. I don’t see this article.
Jan 22 – Chinese govt enacts massive quarantine of Wuhan. This is when the general public in the US (myself included) first notices something big is happening. My thinking at the time was “wow, this is a big deal; imagine NYC being quarantined. I imagined it might spread to the US, but I don’t know that for sure.”
Jan 30 – First cases reported in Italy. All these cases have a link to Wuhan, so they don’t appear to be community transmission, so maybe they’re being contained from spreading locally. Meanwhile, there are plenty of both news stories and viral reports from individuals in Wuhan showing overwhelmed medical systems, cities being shut down, and people being quarantined. These stories are widely circulated in the US.
Jan 31 - Major US airlines suspend all flights to mainland China.
Feb 13 – Mobile World Congress, one of the largest tradeshows in the world, is cancelled over coronavirus fears.
Feb 19-21 – Coronavirus cases are reported to be spreading in many countries via untraced local transmission, specifically in Iran, Italy, and S. Korea. This is the point where the disease is everywhere, and there’s no way to stop it. At this point it’s completely obvious that there will be a big US outbreak. Markets haven’t reacted yet at all, except for companies directly impacted already (eg international airlines that fly to China, cruise ship companies that have stranded passengers on a quarantined ship on the daily news). I personally have a “this is going to be bad; time to do some disaster prep” reaction as well as a “why the hell hasn’t the US market reacted to this yet” reaction.
Feb 21 – Masks and goggles are somewhat hard (though not impossible) to find on Amazon and local HW stores when I’m doing my disaster prep shopping. Disinfecting supplies are still easy to get.
Feb 24 – US stock market finally notices, with a drop of a few percent.
Feb 25 – CDC tells Americans to prepare for coronavirus to hit the US.
Feb 24 to Today - Stocks of US-focused companies in the travel industry (eg hotels, airlines) gradually decline. It’s as if after each day passes, investors look at the increasing number of coronavirus cases in the US and go “huh, looks like it got a bit worse and more conferences are cancelled; let’s sell some of this hotel / airline stock”. Then, the next day comes and the news gets a bit worse, and people sell a bit more. A greater and greater proportion of my social feeds are covered with people talking about coronavirus. Local companies start encouraging work-from-home policies. Lots of events and conferences are gradually cancelled.
It’s weird. It’s almost as if people still can’t imagine things getting that bad in the US even though it’s obvious that it’s happened in numerous other countries and there’s no reason the US will fare any better. I’m wondering if there’s some magical thinking going on where people still hope on some emotional level that the US won’t have to resort to aggressive restrictions on travel and gatherings to stop the spread of the virus here even though every other country with COVID-19 cases has eventually had to do this.
I assume that big hedge funds have rooms full of people that do nothing but cover a specific market sector and read every news article relevant to that sector, but somehow it seems that these groups of people mostly missed that a hugely impactful slowly unfolding global event was happening.
I read a fascinating book called "The Unthinkable" a while back about how people behave in various disaster scenarios, and there's a phenomenon called "milling" during slowly-developing disasters where people just dither on what they should do, consider various plans, but don't take any decisive actions. On 9/11 a lot of people in one of the WTC towers basically milled around their desks and collected supplies while the other tower burned. It didn't help that building managers encouraged them to shelter in place, but a lot of people describe being shaken out of a daze when some person in their company told them to flee for safety.
Maybe this “milling” behaviour is what our entire country was (and in some cases still is) doing.