No, this is a terrible test of credibility. Journalists and politicians often go the other way, amplifying the danger, or outrage, or worry. Taking the outside view, it's overwhelmingly likely that any forecasted pandemic or disaster doesn't happen; we almost always get sky-is-falling predictions and then nothing really seems to happen from the perspective of most viewers or readers. Swine flu, bird flu, ebola, zika, on and on: these have previously in media-market memory been hyped as global catastrophes in the making, and then they turn into localized awfulness. This time, there were many more people than previously who seemed willing to espouse the outside view that this would probably blow over, and it seems incredibly ironic that this time, it didn't go away, and now those same categories of people who have been previously criticized for fear mongering are being lambasted for not fear mongering enough...