The psychology behind why coronavirus was predictable yet people did nothing.
Before Covid-19 there were multiple near misses included Sars in 2013, H5N1 in 2006, Ebola in 2013, Mers in 2015. In mid-February after epidemiologists warned that Covid-19 had “gone global”, financial markets responded only slowly. Even by mid-March many Western governments were still unprepared, with Boris Johnson jovially declaring people would be “pleased to know” he was still shaking hands with everybody at hospitals treating coronavirus patient.
The residents of Pompeii watched Vesuvius’ eruption for hours without evacuating; on the Titanic people refused to head evacuation orders; Hurricane Ivan only narrowly missed New Orleans just 11 months before Katrina devastated the unprepared city; experts at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were convinced that a multiple reactor meltdown was not possible.
These behaviors are replicated in controlled psychological experiments. For example, smoke was pumped into rooms. When the subject was sitting alone, he or she tended to note the smoke and calmly leave to report it. When subjects were in groups of three, they were much less likely to react: each person remained passive, reassured by the passivity of the others.
Normalcy bias is the tendency for people to believe that things will function in the future the way they have normally functioned in the past, underestimating both the likelihood of disasters and their possible effects.
Herd instinct is a lack of individual decision-making or introspection, causing people to think and behave in similar fashion to those around them.
Optimism bias is the tendency for people to be unreasonably optimistic of their own chances of being the victim of an unpleasant fate (crime, accident, disease) whilst overwhelmingly believing unpleasant fates await their peers.
Experiments and post disaster interviews suggest around 70% of people display these behaviours during a disaster – just 10% to 15% act quickly, calmly, and efficiently. Irrespective of disaster type (sinking ship, burning plane, financial crisis, global pandemic), personality types do not correlate to susceptibility, so being a particularly decisive or assertive person does not help. US aircrash investigators suggest some of the strongest mitigants to override these instincts are to be self-reliant, well informed, and preempt with a plan.
Original Articles: https://www.ft.com/content/74e5f04a-7df1-11ea-82f6-150830b3b99a, http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1053663,00.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias