No proof, just an argument:

You can not compare today to the time of hole 49 because the reaction to hole 49 was first due to a rumour that leaked and it took time ( about a week to ten days) for that to sink in.
Now, if you believe Wes, he said that he has plugged most of the leakage. That is why we have a virtual news/rumour black out.
Before we complained about priviledged news and now we complain about not having any. Never satisfied.

The statement from the company about not having any knowledge about the stock price movement last year I believe was an answer to an inquiry from the regulators ( or was it the exchange?).

Today we have no such inquiry, hence no compultion to reply.

Nor are we likely to have any leakage of the coming news. Therefore I say that for history surrounding news release to repeat is very slim.

Hence your assumption no longer has a solid foundation, imho.