You're not the only one with that impression, but I think they are talking about mainstream media when they say that it was mostly ignored in early March. The

You're not the only one with that impression, but I think they are talking about mainstream media when they say that it was mostly ignored in early March. The internet weirdos I followed were all tweeting about it in mid-January, so by the time it was February I was checking Twitter every night for an update, and having a laugh at the totally brainless exhortations by the mainstream media that anybody that believed in Coronavirus was a right-wing conspiracy nut. (By mid-March this had flipped.)