Memory can be a tricky thing. The Vox Recode article was bad, but Vox also published this a week before it. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/6/21121303/coronav... “Don’t scold people for worrying about the coronavirus”

By mid-February the media as a whole was already raising alarm bells, and the stock market began crashing on February 24 as a result of media coverage of the virus.

To jog our memory, we could look at what people were saying in contemporary February articles... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/trump-chief-of-staff-mulvane...

> “The press was covering their hoax of the day because they thought it would bring down the president,” Mulvaney concluded. “The reason you’re seeing so much attention to [the coronavirus] today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. That’s what this is all about.”