Big same. I'm just another software engineer, albeit one with a taste for international news and a few China-focused specialists & one or two PRCs citizens that I follow on Twitter.
This was predictable in early-mid Jan. Once the pics and discussion of the overloaded Wuhan hospitals and the measures the PRC had to take hit the English language world, it was pretty bloody obvious. The news had hit the popular English language papers by Jan 27[1], although I was reading about it somewhat earlier - Jan 12 at the latest[2]. A timeline can be found in [3]. Anyway, by Feb 1, institutions with a specialty in disease control should have been going full bore to address the incoming wave.
Our public health officials, the officials they advise, and other health institutions should be held up to scrutiny and not covered with glory dust just because they had to act by the pace of events.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7933719/Incredible-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/china-mystery-... [3] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...
Your circles seem to be the exception then. There are a lot of factors that affect personal perception of such matters, like proximity to inflicted areas, professional background (ex: medical), experiencing similar events in the past, etc.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the world wasn't paying attention. But it took until February for western countries to realize the epidemic was already out of control, and the markets reacted.
> prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse
Anyone that knew this last month without a doubt could've made tons of money shorting positions in the stock market.
Which brings an interesting question: how many of all the people you know who knew, yourself included, put their skin in the game and are now rich from the options they bought in January? If it is not many, I would argue it is better to say people suspected or feared, not that they knew.
I did, however, rebalance almost entirely out of stocks three weeks ago and while I am not "now rich", my portfolio is doing a hell of a lot better than most folks'.
I didn't even know that a "put" on the stock market was a thing until last week, and am not particularly interested in figuring out how to do that... But I did back out of buying a car because I thought I'd be better off to have the cash when this gets bad, and here we are now in this thread... Maybe next time (hopefully there isn't one) I'll figure out more of what a "put" actually is and how to get one
That being said, I did take what I felt was a risk at the time and shorted Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise lines which payed off, but I was not certain that at the time it would (if I was I would have risked a whole lot more), I went off a hunch once I started seeing them close the ports to cruise ships. I am now buying those stocks because I think their hit from CORVID-19 is priced in, but we will see. It's all a guessing game on good hunches. Hardly anybody saw it exploding (short of the doctors on the ground in Wuhan) and everyone was hoping that it was going to be contained in China just like SARS was.
The reality is, Doctors and the CDC do not make decisions on news reports they make them on papers and data from people on the ground. That data was actively being suppressed to some extent by China until it was too late. Sure there where rouge Chinese doctors in the media warning us (and they where right), but that is a thin straw to base policy on. Once the true data was out and the CDC could base guideline on it, it was already too late.
Also to note I am sorry and pray for those of you that are affected by this.
But even if you saw it coming, how does this help now? Right, it doesn't.
That someone's circles saw it coming doesn't help. Wht you can do now helps. Unfortunately a lot of these folks are lacking in that department IMHO.
But every time there were people "predicting" the worst. This time they were coindentially correct. Not because they "knew", but because chance.
Ref: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117403/trump-coronaviru...
My comment was in response to people not realizing this was a thing a month ago.
And then the House tried to remove Trump's travel ban: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/12/house-committee-vot...
You can play politics or you can look at reality.
page 9 Do you think the coronavirus epidemic is a national emergency? yes, democrats 81%; no, republicans 53%
page 18 Which cable news network do you watch the most? Democrats, 42% CNN, 48% MSNBC; Republicans, 89% Fox News
Trump himself has been downplaying it this whole time. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-statements-about-th...
"The legislation would void all of Trump's executive actions establishing travel restrictions."
I don't think we should excuse the many failures of our leaders, but I also don't think the now-obvious economic impact of this crisis was that clearcut even a month ago.
Good way of looking at it.
The United States government was thoroughly informed of this risk via Operation Dark Winter but never geared up for it - perhaps this is best managed by states once the infection crosses the border, but preparations on those levels weren’t completed either.
There is a real chance that our lockdown will kill more people through stress-induced heart attacks, suicides, and general fallout from food and income insecurity than the virus would have.
My only takeaway from all of this is that our hospital system is really, really bad at handling any kind of temporary spike in disease or death. And I'm upset with our governor for panicking and putting the entire service industry out of a job, which may actually cause harm to them in great numbers beyond a probably sub-1% chance of dying from a flu-like illness.
If the health system is overrun, and there are zero ICU beds or ventilators available, that number will go up quickly. THAT is the problem we are trying to avoid.
SARS experienced countries made very different decisions, over the past few months, and since 2003.
First: I’m super sorry about what you’re going through and I hope things work out with your new employer.
Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse. Super uncontroversial. And like, I’m just a guy.
On an individual level, that excuse is unfortunate, but the individual level doesn’t matter much (except for the individual, of course). On an institutional and a governance level, we’re likely to excuse the failures of our leaders because we ourselves weren’t paying attention.