The "gurus" you speak of are attention seekers. For them bleating on about some aspect of COVID-19 is just part of their PR playbook. Knowledgeable scientists are the first to admit that the situation is novel and that they are too busy saving lives to undertake statistical analyses of incomplete, inconsistent data sets. It is amazing just how fast information is being shared with the internet and those who have the requisite understanding are striving to come to speed on what works and what doesn't. We will only truly understand COVID-19 a couple of years down the track when the epidemic has been halted and there had been time to collate, clean and then analyse the data.
Elon Musk did a similar stunt with his "submarine" to rescue the trapped children in Thailand. It never got used so we'll never know whether it was even capable of working as claimed.