Whilst I was out walking our dog this morning, I was thinking about a lot of the initial indifference to the CV outbreak here in the UK, and the failure of both the authorities and the general public at large to take it extremely seriously. One very credible reason could be that many of us have now become more accustomed to misinformation/'fake' news and purely sensationalistic journalism in general over more recent years, which in turn has probably caused many of us to simply dismiss a lot of this CV stuff as nothing more than 'hype' and 'scaremongering'.
Whilst I still agree that many daily publications (especially the Daily Fail, Daily Depress, Scum, etc) have been really pushing all things CV to the absolute max, along with many other emotionally-charged issues over these past few years (eg President Trump, Brexit, terrorism, violent crime epidemics, etc), though all of such issues have been genuinely pertinent, it has probably caused a sense of 'too much info' amongst many and inadvertently the 'familiarity breeds contempt' scenario, which IMO has set a dangerous precedent for a lot of the indifference to CV and its potential risks, which we now seem to, unfortunately, be paying the price for!!
All in all, I consider the main fault of the press to be the fact that they have been 'crying wolf' over many issues for far too long now, mostly in pursuit of £s, which has inevitably resulted in information fatigue amongst many of us, causing many of us to simply 'switch off' and not take stuff as seriously anymore. I really hope this global CV pandemic and a lot of the consequential fallouts from it will force all newspapers, be they local, national or international, and regardless of political/
social/cultural angles start to change tack and tone down a lot of their OTT, sensationalistic stuff that they have been recklessly spewing out for far too long now, and all for the long-term benefit and wellbeing of society as a whole.