Behavioural science can tell us only so much, just as data science has its limitations. There are those, though, who have studied people’s reactions to disaster. Sandro Galea, the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, has written about the five stages of reaction, which I will summarise here as: 1) self-preservation: fear and anxiety; 2) group preservation, where changes in social behaviour begin; 3) blame-setting: the psychological consequences fall into place as we realise we have to change our normal activities; 4) justice-seeking: we want to see what and who caused the disaster; 5) renormalising – basically, we have adapted to the crisis and its consequences.