But it felt like watching a train wreck or car crash in super slow motion and and not being able to do anything about it.

I definitely had the "stereotypical zombie movie" experience of background news reports and a general aura/mood of something going down in the background until everything went kinda wild. As soon as I was fully onboard with "this is real" (a bit behind you, but a bit ahead of the average American) the absolute tripping and stumbling and failure to make even the minimum amount of moves until it was a week late was total "slow motion car crash" mood.