I beat the author of the article to the start of the race to prepare for the worst-case scenario by a week & a half. He started Feb. 2, I started Jan 26th. The turning point for me was Chinese New Year, Jan 24th. We had diner with a family of Chinese nationals who have been in the US for about 6 years. The husband/dad is a college professor/researcher & his daughter is a classmate with our daughter & best friends. They ordered fish for all of us because they said eating fish on New Years Day will bring good luck all year. They are very serious adults, somewhat pro-China & no where near being a couple of “cling to your Bibles & guns” preppers. But with a few sentences they changed my mind about the coronavirus. They told us not to believe anything from the Chinese media about the crisis. I started looking for masks, hand sanitizer & other staples a month before the thought of doing so arose in the mass US media. I recently found out that was the last time they ate at a set down restaurant. It was the second from last time for us.
Financially planning speaking, the turning point was the night/morning before the markets fell 20% indicating a beginning of Bear Markets. That was easily predicted because all futures indexes showed big market falls & overseas were already in the dumps. Not hard to miss that if you read financial news.
The turning point for me when I realized the country was going to shut down was when NCAA Basketball canceled March Madness. I was onboarding on a temp job & didn’t realize things ashore was so bad until then. That was a big deal. There was no turning point for me for shutting down international travel because that was a no-brainer for me. I was amazed the WHO, the Chinese Government & anti-Trump’ers fought against the travel shutdowns & demanded that we wait for more research. Shutting down international travel was obvious IMO.
My latest turning point was in Mid-April when I went to Lowes for the first time after missing the worst of the panics offshore. The workers & shoppers at Lowes were going about their business the best they could. A pandemic couldn’t stop them from wanting to improve their homes, spend money & continue with their pursuit of happiness. In the following weeks I seen people become braver, calmer & more determined to go back to the way things were before. They wear masks & stand 6ft apart from each other but they are still determined. The hiking & running trails are crammed packed around me. Those who survive will shake it off & be stronger than before. Things are getting more back to normal every day. 2 months into the national crisis & many states have had fewer total deaths than what NYC was having every day at its peak. IMO, even if the total number of deaths quadruple in 1 day in these places I believe people will still strive to get back to their business of pursuing their happiness.
Below is my first comment about the coronavirus. Jan 30th, I was the second commenter.