Pretty stupid really, but it always happens. Smart investors know to short the market when a pandemic is declared, while the rich are going to have a field-day buying up the cheap shares and properties that result from the mass hysteria.
At the end of it, the idiots will be left poorer and the rich will be richer, as things always were.
This is really the story. A time to buy for the rich is the time the poor sell. If the poor don't sell, the rich won't see what to buy. This is a situation that keeps coming in our faces. Apart from panic, the other thing that makes the poor to always look at selling as a means to survive is lack of liquidity for investment.