As an exaggerated example, if I went to people who are all on stage4 cancer, and give them the corona virus, and 20% of them die, cnn will post something like "the corona virus kills 20% of people based on that sample!"
"Swine flu's" eventual death count ended up being 10x lower than what "the news" was initially predicting.
(I don’t recall reading it was a cruise for stage 4 cancer patients. Darn media)
So yes, it's media sensationalism.
BTW if the at risk population is 10% and the IFR for that population is 10% and 0% for everyone else, and infections are spread evenly, that works out to 1% IFR. You have some things you’re very frustrated by, I can tell, but your attempt to substantiate your emotions with data criticism is not successful.