Vaccination and masking of low risk populations isn't about protecting them. In general, those measures are aimed at reducing community spread in general. It isn't about just whether
you might die, but the effect on the population and economy as a whole.
The "panic" as you call it is justified as long as the community transmission is out of control. If local areas are able to either entirely rid themselves of infection, or at least reduce it to the point that contact tracing and individual quarantine are more viable, it makes sense to relax measures. I'd say in that sense I agree that national or state wide mandates can be overly broad. When even a small number of cases can balloon exponentially though, it's better to come on too strong than use the soft touch.
"Consistent standards" is a meaningless idea, when the responsive bodies are in an entirely new situation. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. There's been worse in terms of disease, but not in the kind of social and technological setting we have now. The standards are evolving as the situation and threat do. They've said plenty that was wrong, or at least not entirely right, but they've had no way to judge what works other than hindsight.
Uh huh... Because, unsurprisingly, different threats call for different responses. The Luftwaffe had everyone hanging blackout curtains, and the civil war saw huge numbers drafted to military service. People complained about both of those too. They're not doing either here because it wouldn't make a lick of sense. Since covid is spread person to person, they're trying to reduce the person to person interaction you'd see at the pub, rather than trying to reduce city glow so bombers can't find you.