# Has LessWrong been a good early alarm bell for the pandemic?

The [S&P 500 began to crash](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19TcDZ3GvRe9voIY7gb73I02pJsdwyzRI/view?usp=sharing) on Feb. 20th.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/v1585937062/Screen_Shot_2020-04-03_at_10.31.53_AM_dlmyiy.png)

On or prior to that date, there were 6 posts on LessWrong related to COVID-19 (thanks to habryka, who found 3 that I'd missed).

[Jan 20 - Rationalist prepper thread](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/imkx2ke3xiiak6MsH/rationalist-prepper-thread)

[Jan 26 - Concerning the Recent 2019-Novel Coronavirus Outbreak](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g2F5BBfhTNESR5PJJ/concerning-the-recent-2019-novel-coronavirus-outbreak)

[Feb 5 - Some quick notes on hand hygiene](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ztDYsD4v7AaAbWEDM/some-quick-notes-on-hand-hygiene)

[Feb 11 - Will nCoV survivors suffer lasting disability at a high rate?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4GFHbhxE2pfiadhi/will-ncov-survivors-suffer-lasting-disability-at-a-high-rate)

[Feb 14 - Please Help Metaculus Forecast COVID-19](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LuL7LLqcdmM7TTYvW/please-help-metaculus-forecast-covid-19)

[Feb 20 - Making sense of coronavirus stats](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W7dcXash4KvvBngie/making-sense-of-coronavirus-stats)

As a bonus, Scott Alexander dropped a link in his Links 2/20 post saying "As of earlier this month, China’s coronavirus case numbers followed [such a neat quadratic curve](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/oc_quadratic_coronavirus_epidemic_growth_model/) that they seem kind of like low-effort fakes. Not sure if this also applies to the [current numbers](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/reported-covid-19-cases-spiked-1-day-china-here-s-n1136596)."

Near-daily COVID posting began on Feb. 20th. After Feb. 27th, [the number of LW COVID-19 posts has increased by about 4 posts per day to a total of nearly 200](https://drive.google.com/open?id=14YOR15rcDHwnLFhWy_bNdChwhB7-7RfK):

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/v1585934406/covid_posts_uz8il2.png)

The New York Times has [compiled a recent history of the pandemic](https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html).

Before Feb 20, what had happened?

*   The WHO had declared a global health emergency
*   The Trump administration had restricted travel from China
*   There had been hundreds of deaths, including some outside China
*   Almost 50,000 cases were reported in Hubei Province
*   Hundreds of people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship were infected, the ship had been quarantined, and the passengers had finally been able to disembark

By Feb. 23, the S&P 500 had started to descend, and Italy was beginning to lock its cities down. It wasn't until around Feb. 27th, after Trump requested a big bailout from Congress, Iran reported over 60 deaths, and cases had spread to Latin America, that LessWrong began to see accelerated COVID posting. The number spiked from around 1 post per day to the average of 4-5 posts per day we've seen since then.

**If the sheer volume of conversation is our alarm bell, this site seems to have lagged behind the stock market by about a week.**