• Many 'experts' weren't really experts in forecasting emerging pandemics, they were experts in some other area (e.g. treating diseases, which is almost a completely different skill). Even studying emerging viruses biologically isn't the same as forecasting them. The forecasting and modelling experts like Ferguson were more likely to predict a global pandemic as the baseline outcome from early February.
It's hard to know whether to cite narrow experts or smart generalists on a given topic, but one can present both perspectives and guess which one might be more reliable on the issue.
Narrow domain experts in a different area (e.g. in this case non-communicable diseases) are probably worse than both.
• When folks said COVID-19 wasn't likely to cause a big pandemic in the US, and they were pressed, they typically couldn't offer a good reason. I looked, folks couldn't justify what they were saying.
Would it be stopped at the border? No. Did we have good reason to think the IFR was low? Not really. Did we have good reason to think it wasn't very contagious? No, the opposite really. Did we have historical examples of containing a similar respiratory illness? Only one and we were already well past that.
So what was the basis? There simply wasn't one except a prior that big pandemics are rare. That's good to know. It suggests COVID-19 might peter out for as yet unknown reasons. But it's not enough to offer confident reassurances.
I think this is why Silicon Valley wasn't buying it, to their credit. They looked under the hood and weren't impressed.
• The officials and public health folks being quoted more or less directly announced they were saying what they were saying to influence the public, e.g. prevent panic. Journalists may want to participate in that effort but then their coverage will have to include bad forecasts.
• US news sources overwhelmingly cited US experts who didn't represent the preponderance of global opinion, which was more pessimistic and more diverse. There was little reason for X to talk to an American CDC official over an expert in Singapore or Hong Kong or South Korea. The reverse really given their governments are more competent in the relevant domains.
• Journalists writing about important technical issues should have enough domain knowledge to form some 'inside view' of their own to avoid being misled by questionable expertise. Y could do a good job because she has relevant knowledge. I could form my own view because I've read enough about historical pandemics to have an elementary understanding of how they go.