Yeah the timing was absolutely mental, one day its wall to wall balloon coverage and then boom a train full of toxic chemicals derails and somehow the balloon still gets more airtime for another week, make it make sense.
I've been down this rabbit hole since it happened and the thing that gets me is how quickly the EPA basically said "yeah its fine" when the area around East Palestine looked like something out of a disaster film. My mate who follows environmental stuff professionally said the deoxygenation of that river alone should have been a massive national story on its own.
Not saying its definitely a deliberate distraction but the overlap is suspicious enough that you'd have to be asleep not to notice. Anyone else been tracking the media coverage patterns on this one? Would be good to compare notes because I've only scratched the surface really.