- If society treats the new contagion as no big deal, it can spread and kill A LOT of people, and everyone will say "Why did no one take this seriously!?)
- If society takes it seriously, odds are that any outbreak will be contained and short-lived, and everyone will say "This was hype and not worthy of the concern".
Humans don't process this sort of thing well. You can see it now in the mix of doom predictions, over reactions that happen to fit comfortably with racist sentiments, and statements about how the seasonal flu has killed so many more people than the Corona virus (which should be taken as a sign that flus should be taken seriously, not that they should be ignored, while also true that panic helps no one, but instead come across as "meh, you're overreacting")
In this vein, yes, the reaction to the vaping issues were misplaced to the key problems, were well out scope of the injuries, and appear hypocritical when compared to the many other often-lethal things in society that we openly tolerate. The lesson from that, however, should be "wow, we handle issues of life and death poorly, when those are the issues we'd rather handle well", not "taking any life-and-death situation seriously is an overreaction".