> I also remember many media outlets using extremely emotionally appealing images of "scary" hospital scenes and the like.

I don't know under which rock you lived, but in my home town the armed forces had to commandeer hotels and an expo hall to have enough beds to accommodate all the critical COVID patients.

Do you believe health services didn't struggled to handle the massive inflow of COVID cases?

> I also remember a picture of a pauper's graveyard being used as a image of how "horrifying" the Covid death rate was, and other visceral but misleading stories.

You ignore what you wish to ignore. Commandeering ice rinks to serve as makeshift morgues and local morgues having to work around the clock with piles of caskets and body bags piled up in freezers to handle all the dead was something that affected only the poor?