Given that we're reading this, it's probably priced in by now. But in principle the answer would be yes, but only with money you can afford to lose; any investment on a single-name stock is risky, and shorting is even more so.
In my experience narratives are as priced in as they are accepted, so in the interim between "you first hear of this" and "everyone believes this" there is opportunity - bearing in mind that the interim between those two things is shorter the more believable the new thing.
But for instance in the case of "there's a new plague and China is locking down" there were several months between first hearing about it and everyone recognizing it.
Naked short sure, but you could buy some out of the money calls to cap your max loss. It’d just eat into the profit margin of your total bet. If you’re going to keep shorting more on the way down it gets more complicated.
