The place you would find such stories are the google forums where google and their volunteers have a vested interest in pruning such complaints.
Most normies don’t get locked out because they don’t use 2fa, don’t change devices and use a single easy to remember (probably easily guessable) password for every account.
Getting locked out of google is most likely the result of using security best practices like installing a 2fa app on a device that gets lost. Or a misplaced yubi key, etc…
Good advice is to print out one time use codes, and store them somewhere safe, like a safe. Physical security is much better in a digital world than digital security.
There are still cases where individuals' accounts get banned randomly (and if there's enough ruckus, reinstated), which I've posted about there. And thinking about it, it might be the case that developer accounts with $$$ invested in them might just be the most likely to post on HN and complain, while individuals just suffer Google's "support" and give up. In any case, they're not as easily visible as the dev account bans, so we don't know how often they occur (unless someone trawls through support.google.com posts and creates a list of such).