An Economic Predictor of Highly Contagious Disease?

       The year is 2020.  Just one day before we welcomed the new decade, Wuhan, China announced that they were treating dozens of locals for something.  That something has now taken the world by storm—known today as the coronavirus, or COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, this disease may not show itself via symptoms for up to two weeks.  Such an epidemic is not foreign to youth today, who have lived through the ebola crisis; adults have been around long enough to see SARS come and go as well.  It was rather the fact that the Chinese government hid the existence of such a highly contagious disease for months (to save face) that shocked the world, and it left us asking: how can we make ourselves aware of health dangers that governments don't want to tell us about until it may be too late?
        The answer: stocks of businesses that provide disease-preventative supplies.  One mask manufacturer in China, Lanhine, explained 200 million protective face masks are in demand daily now.  However, given that citizens of Wuhan have been aware of this disease for much longer than the global population has been, Lanhine stocks were spiking during the days preceding Wuhan's recognition of the virus.  Some people argue that the Chinese government created the coronavirus to serve as a biological weapon, and this belief would only further support the idea that local residents were taking advantage of their early knowledge.  In the case that the disease was an unfortunate product of problematic poultry/fish markets, as is suggested to be the origin by many scientists and the Chinese government, those residents of Wuhan who had not yet fallen ill would likely purchase and hoard masks to protect themselves.
         This is simply an observation that I and many others have made: when demand for anti-contagion health products increases significantly, it is likely the result of a fearful contagious disease.  Take it with a grain of salt, but do recognize that this pattern has followed since the SARS epidemic not too long ago.  In an increasingly globalizing world, disease spreads faster; the simultaneous benefit is one of a globalized economy that can suggest through market fairings that such a disease even exists.