Yes they did, because most of the people we're talking about had real time examples going on while they were denying there was a problem. In Italy, they could have looked at what happened in China, but chose not to. You could perhaps forgive that, possibly they thought that population density, smoking rates or other demographics made a huge difference. But Spain has no excuse at all because they literally had an example of an (for all intents an purposes) identical country right on their doorstep and still chose to ignore it. My wife is Spanish so I followed a lot of the reactions there and they were flat out ridiculous. Similarly with the e.g. the US - did they really think the virus was going to act differently there than in other parts of the world?
If it was all so obvious, the stock market would have dumped weeks before it did.
Did you sell in early February? Did you take out shorts on the market? Why not?
But my point still stands - if it was obvious to people, the market would have dumped earlier than mid-Feb.
Nobody likes to be wrong, and people always try to rewrite history so they were right all along. Rush Limbaugh made hay by hanging democrats with clips of their previous statements, and Jon Stewart made hay by doing the same thing to republicans.