Hi All: A bit late to this interesting thread; however, I would invite everyone to think about all the breaking news stories or even deeper dive news stories that they have every seen discussing an aviation topic … then consider all the things you noticed and quibbled with the reporter’s simplified, or even incorrect, presentation of that aviation complicated topic. You bring all your training and experience to bear on the aviation story and see that there really is far more to most aspects that are being considered and probably not a compelling narrative arc either.
Why should we, as news consumers believe that the media’s handling of the Wuhan/Covid-19 stories be any better than those the aviation stores they do?
My suggestion is epistemic humility … as non-epidemiologists, non-infectious disease, and non-virologists, we probably don’t really know what we think we may know from the media stories. In fact, the “experts” have themselves been wrong about almost every prediction they have made since January this year. Then filter what the actual experts say through the randomizer of the news media and the real facts/story is garbled as always by the media.
The Wuhan/Covid story is just as jumbled as the last aviation story you complained about, and probably even more so, because there are so many actual unknowns about this (semi)novel coronavirus.
Cheers,
D