> The fact that there was not more escalation had a lot to do with how many people were watching closely

It had absolutely nothing to do with the rubberneckers (myself included) who were following it from moment to moment on the other side of the country.

Some small percentage of the watchers are in a place to actually do something about it, and if that's you then fine. Most of us don't need to know on the day of, we've just grown accustomed to knowing, and it's probably honestly a net negative for the world that we do follow things that are outside of our control so closely.