Results based on the data of A-share companies in 2020 show that the trend companies attributing earnings changes to COVID-19 decreases with the passage of time. The probability of attribution to COVID-19 is significantly higher for bad news when compared to good news and this difference doesn't change over the quarters, indicating that COVID-19 attribution might be the combination of managements' self-serving attribution and the impacts of COVID-19. However, under specific circumstances, investors are able to, at least to some extent, identify management's self-serving attributions. The above results demonstrate the effectiveness of China's fight against COVID-19 from the perspective of micro economic entity and market perception, and provide insights into how to regulate management disclosure manipulation under major exogenous shocks.