There is definitely a positive feedback loop of overreaction. One locale sees what another locale is doing and tries to one-up them, but that place they looked at was trying to one-up another place, ad infinitum. Now we're stuck with excessive protocols that don't make any sense and since they aren't effective or well-reasoned to begin with, when they fail they just get worse instead of looking at the alternatives that they should have in the first place.

Theres another reason for the media hysteria. Trump was president. They saw it as an opportunity to hammer Trump as being incompetent and directly responsible for peoples deaths. Aain ignoring their own culpability in opposing methods to avoid its spread from China, which they also did to simply oppose Trump.

The hysteria also stems from media hostility towards working class whites, who have been impacted the hardest by lockdown measures and are the most skeptical of these measures. When blacks and liberals attended mass blm protests they didnt say shit, but if some working class whites losing their livelyhoods protest they pounce. They naturally also backed off the demonization when orthodox Jews protested against bans of mass gatherings.