But I'm here as a near 7 year resident to inform you that a lot of this is blown up by people on the internet that are looking for internet points as they select the worst data points at a certain part of town during a specific time of day instead of looking at the entire picture.

Most of the statistics you see made by journalists are put together like that, selecting the extremes, to have a bigger impact, objectivity is not something they looking to provide. This is why you need to take everything with a pinch of salt.

because the government has coordinated the burns so that everyone does it around the same time and just goes ahead and gets it over with.

This is interesting as in my country, burning the fuelds is prohibited by law and not only for the smoke, but to avoid fires getting out of control.

As about the smoke, it deoens on the weather, if it's a bit of windy or not, but you can't prevent smoke from circulating and moving towards other areas, so having over 200 in one area and 15 on the other is only possible if they are hundreds of km away from each other.

You can't trust the media.