[ilkan]

IMHO, the journalists' mistake was lazily relying on easily accessible Western orgs instead of partnering with Eastern-based journalists to examine stories coming out of China. I've been following the South China Morning Post since the first week of January and so far all the observations coming from their experts has been refuted by the CDC first, then confirmed a month or two later. They are just as smart, highly motivated and had at least 10x more casework to examine. Tldr; if you want to make better predictions, compare expert opinion against news closer to the source.