Caveat Emptor is one of the deepest truths, whether shopping on amazon or listening to experts of different stripes, there has been enough information on the internet to come to accurate conclusions at every step, enough historical info from sars and spanish flu to see what could have been coming down the pipe, enough social media leak from China to tell that this was not contained, the choice is not between obliviousness or panic it's about prudent low cost risk mitigation.<p>The fact is, that many people's internal information filtering algorithm is lacking, small preparation is sufficient 90% of the time as long as you are looking at slow moving historic signals, it's about small risk mitigations early.<p>As played out as it is, this is further proof that the medium is the message, people engaging in unidirectional or bidirectional firehose messaging (cable tv, twitter, facebook) have tended towards panic or dismissiveness, people following historical information and slowly changing documents and global forums have been able to take prudent low cost risk mitigation, and by doing it early have operated comfortably on a different wavelength than people panic buying.<p>Unstructured messaging and it's cognitive overhead is a problem, unstructured messaging means that even if the inbound message is about the issue currently in your head, the design of "alerts" trigger a disruptive near context switch, like a digital doorway effect that sabotages deep thinking, deep thinking is required for prudence.<p>People still don't understand how bad this is though, for Americans, I'm only just now seeing a few people and articles connect the dots on bio warfare preparedness and how our asymmetrically weak and discordant response puts the U.S. at increased risk from a national security and power projection perspective. These aren't truths per se, just probability curves.<p>As an example, since mid December I've been gently decreasing my downside risk, divesting and putting a few dollars here and there into things like masks and non perishables, already had a bidet, water filter, UV lamps, etc. No special preparation just things I already have around the house for my aquarium, camping, spray painting, hot ones challenges, etc. I haven't had to wait in any grocery lines or experience any personal discomfort or anxiety, and my slightly early social distancing was subtle enough most people didn't even notice. I was telling people who asked "These might be historic times, low cost preparation is in order."<p>All this is from an individuals perspective, businesses should already be operating with risk management plans.