Just this Monday evening, a professor at the local medical school emailed someone I know, "I'm sorry you're so worried about the coronavirus. It seems much less worrying than the flu to me." (He specializes in rehabilitation medicine, but still!) Pretending to be wise seems right to me, or another way to look at it is through the lens of signaling and counter-signaling:
The truly ignorant don't panic because they don't even know about the virus.
People who learn about the virus raise the alarm in part to signal their intelligence and knowledge.
"Experts" counter-signal to separate themselves from the masses by saying "no need to panic".
People like us counter-counter-signal the "experts" to show we're even smarter / more rational / more aware of social dynamics.
Here's another example, which has actually happened 3 times to me already:
The truly ignorant don't wear masks.
Many people wear masks or encourage others to wear masks in part to signal their knowledge and conscientiousness.
"Experts" counter-signal with "masks don't do much", "we should be evidence-based" and "WHO says 'If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.'"
I respond by citing actual evidence in the form of a meta-analysis: medical procedure masks combined with hand hygiene achieved RR of .73 while hand hygiene alone had a (not statistically significant) RR of .86.
that I have become more pessimistic about humanity correctly responding to global catastrophic risks in the future
Maybe correctly understanding the underlying social dynamics can help us figure out how to solve or ameliorate the problem, for example by deliberately pushing more people toward the higher part of the counter-signaling ladder (but hopefully not so much that another group forms to counter-signal us).
Now that the stock market has plummeted, from what my perspective appeared entirely predictable given my inside view information, I am also starting to doubt the efficiency of the stock market in response to historically unprecedented events.
I used to be a big believer in stock market efficiency, but I guess Bitcoin taught me that sometimes there just are $20 bills lying on the street. So I actually made a sizable bet against the market two weeks ago.