yes, it's frenzy, a typically pro-social behavior (agreeableness) that's misapplied due to fear and uncertainty, so that we get counterintuitive consequences from overly correlated belief/behavior.
it's the same impulse that got us mis-masking and lockdowns, when the real danger was inter-/intra-familial contact (because that contact is prolonged and our guards are down, unlike with "stranger danger").
happens all too often, and it's frustrating to watch otherwise perceptive and reasonable people forsake those facilities for primal herd behavior.
If I had a nickle for every social media user who's screeching about how airbags are all that's good in the world but who doesn't understand the inherent tradeoffs to a bag of dense air occupying the space in front of the driver or how a crumple zone is basically a single use spring I would use the money to hire people to beat the first group of people over the head with highshcool physics textbooks.
I wish we'd regress to '50s attitudes about safety simply so that the people who care about safety no longer have to be held back by the people who crap all over everything by wanting to be seen caring about safety.