Does "not very" refer to "not very often; rarely"?

Context:

“New Planet Found” is about as exciting a headline nowadays as “Dog Bites Man,” which is to say, not very. Thanks largely to the space-based Kepler Mission, astronomers have identified about 2,000 new worlds, orbiting stars that lie tens or even hundreds of light-years from Earth, in the last two decades. Collectively, these are scientifically important, but with so many in hand no single addition to the list is likely to be much of a big deal. But a new planet announcement today from the California Institute of Technology is a very different proposition, because the world it describes does not circle a distant star. It is part of our own solar system—a place you would think we had explored pretty well by now.

More:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strong-evidence-suggests-a-super-earth-lies-beyond-pluto1/