True, but between actually seeing the first news and figuring out: "Oh my God, this is going to be a global pandemic!", it took me a while. I think most people were in the same boat.
My wife had taken a couple infectious diseases courses as part of her anthropology degree so she was tuned into this whole thing and the first article she read about it end of December I remember her freaking out. "Oh, great, another SARS-type virus has been found, we're screwed" and me being like "honey, you're being paranoid. relax."
Around mid-February I saw in the news that there was a somewhat big cluster in Italy and realized that everyone was screwed :-(