Look, as a journalist, what are you supposed to do? You don't actually know much - its not expected that you know everything about everything (who does). So you do journalism. You investigate and replay back your findings.

"Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes" Is this a fact, or a lie? Did Vox fabricate this, or did they misconstrue and mislead?

"“experts” saying everything is fine" Did "experts" say everything is fine, or did they not? Again, is Vox outright lying? Did they mislead by picking poor "experts"?

I think that Vox.com's "assertive contrarian" tone-of-voice might have created some posts that look poor in hindsight (erring on the side of "not killing people" is probably for the best), but lets a) actually define the assertions against Vox's journalistic integrity and b) acknowledge that health officials were not exactly clear, consistent, and eventually correct.