SpaceX loses another Starship prototype in explosion

I'm not sure why they are trying to tie an experimental engine test so tightly with the crew launch. I know the two events are temporally close to each other but seems a bit alarmist to start the article attempting to connect the two. They do continue to say they are unrelated but why even bother bringing up the crew launch at all?

I'm sort of surprised they went ahead with the Starship test, assuming they knew it had a likelihood of failure, given the temporal proximity to demo-2 and the inevitable bad press if the Starship test ended in an explosion.