Even if you take the most breathless headlines about NIF at face value, we are obviously still decades away from a commercial fusion power plant. Let's say laser fusion is great and perfect, all we need to do is design a commercial facility that uses modern lasers and then construct it, with commercial turbines/etc, as well as commercial production of the fuel pellets. Just that will take decades. Even basic bitch coal power plants take several years to construct and there's nothing novel about those.
But the reality is that even with the best lasers available today, they wouldn't get enough energy out to make this commercially viable. Decades more development time is needed before they can even think about designing a commercial power plant.
No sooner than 50 years.
So yeah, when people are told fusion is around the corner but all they hear are small improvements that to them mean nothing, its easy to see why. Now obviously not everyone is that way, there are communities of laymen and amateurs online who are interested and do care. But you don't need public press conferences to get to them. A press conference is for Joe Sixpack. And Joe Sixpack assumes when you come calling about Fusion its to say that it works, global warming has been solved and his electric bill will be next to nothing.