Remember the old days? One had to call restaurants and shops to order in food, groceries, and other staples. More serious matters like insurance required you to call various insurance providers and get quotes or receive cold calls out of the blue to purchase insurance from them.
Nobel economist Richard Thaler observed that people are predictably irrational, and do not always make rational decisions, even if they may be good for them. They need a nudge, at the right time, in the right way.
While the very first case of infection by coronavirus will probably never really be accurately known, by the 31st of December 2019 the city Municipal Health Commission of Wuhan, a city in central China which lay at the junction of dense industrial and trade networks, reported an outbreak of cases of pneumonia. A new kind of coronavirus was subsequently identified. By mid-January, the first recorded cases were confirmed outside of China, starting with Thailand. On January 22, the WHO mission to China issued a statement stating that there was some evidence of human to human transmission, but more investigations were needed.