Many of these articles are being written, probably because there's a paying customer. The late Soviet Union had an army of publicists whose job was to dismiss real and growing concerns with "but we just had a record crop and milk production is up".

Lots of western academics have seemingly started writing for Pravda these days. They are (deliberately?) missing the point: human perception of economic wellbeing is relative, not absolute. Antibiotics and running water are nice, but they are expected bare minimum.