Yes, those comments are definitely indicative of them taking it seriously.

Pretty quick, I'll give them that, but not before coverage - this is only a week or so before I became aware of the virus. Granted, I was traveling in China at the time, but it was known.

I only mean seriously in the sense of giving their attention to it, in somewhat the same way as sewer sampling can be a useful way to detect emerging COVID clusters. Online extremists glom onto anything involving political instability because it's a potential opportunity. I noticed the same thing with the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.