Governments scrambling to gauge how their populations are accepting coronavirus stay-at-home orders have turned, in some cases, to cellphone tracking to measure compliance. Yet this mass surveillance captures only the physical aspect of the pandemic-related information environment. To understand why some residents willingly shelter in place while others ignore government orders, and to gauge where our nation might be heading next, we need to better understand media coverage of the coronavirus and what the public has been told about it since the beginning.