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It wasn't just the NYT, it was almost all mainstream media blowing up about it when the east coast got a little smoke. The pics honestly didnt even look so bad compared to what I've been through the past 7 or so years. It seemed like it wasn't really news worthy until New Yorkers coughed a little more than usual.

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The Times is writing for an audience that includes East Coasters, meaning that an ordinary occurrence in your life on the West Coast will be treated as unusual on the East Coast.

(This is true in the general case: the newspaper doesn’t know what you or anyone else has been through; your responsibility as a reader is to infer whether you’re the intended audience, or whether the audience is people who haven’t had the same experience as you.)

> It wasn't just the NYT, it was almost all mainstream media

And it was prolonged coverage too.

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