That's not accurate. When China had an outbreak, and markets dropped, I bought at the bottom (Feb 28). I saw pure panic, and pushed my equity allocation up +2% to buy more stocks. That day had pure panic, and I bought equities.
Lumping all drops together ignores the separate events that went into them. There's the China outbreak, outbreaks outside China, the U.S. outbreak, and the oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
When I saw the U.S. outbreak reaching significant numbers on the weekend of Mar 7-8, the market saw it, too. I saw country after country follow the same pattern, and cause panic. When U.S. futures markets priced in a -5% drop, I couldn't reconcile such a small drop against such a major problem. The U.S. was poorly prepared, with denials of a problem and inadequate testing. Many people can't afford to visit doctors, nor can they afford to skip work, and would make it harder to contain the outbreak in the U.S. All together, the market reaction looked too small, so I accepted a -6% drop as the price to avoid a much larger drop.
Tomorrow I expect the U.S. to hit 5,000 cases. I've been saying that since last week, and the U.S. has 4,000 cases now. More importantly, I predict 10,000 cases roughly by Friday, March 20. I'm expecting 10,000 cases to be picked up by the media and cause another panic - just like last Friday, and like Feb 28th.
Since I sold, U.S. markets have dropped about -14%. Italy, France and Spain are on lock down. The two choices seem to be locking down, or allowing mass infections. What I've seen is every country locks down regions (China) or the entire country in response to the pressure to save lives. I don't see how the U.S. can avoid locking down cities and regions, impacting both consumption and production. That's why I predicted more drops, and why markets have been very panicked for the past 6 trading days.
Now that U.S. markets are down -9%, with additional damage to small caps and international? Now, I'm buying equities.