Rainboe, its not been a total waste of time. Apart from anything else it has confirmed that the general public don't understand 'risk' as applied to aviation, and for the most part don't want to, any more than the risks involvolved in eating peanut butter or barbecued food (surprisingly significant). It also confirms that you may all be ace at flying, but you're pants at communicating in a way that Joe and Jane Public are comfortable with. Thats not a criticism; I'm a scientist - I should be better and I'm just as bad.
If you make a list of (say) environmental risks in order of the amount of people they kill every year and then get Joe or Jane to list them again in order of how alarming they are, you'll end up with two completely different lists; the things that alarm and frighten us are not necessarily the things that kill us, which is why people continue to smoke cigarettes but refuse to board an aircraft if presented with a sign telling them the same numerical risk factors for their flight. Although they are told that the risk is the same, the immediacy of the issue is diffuse in the cancer from smoking issue - they can do something about it tomorrow.
Peter Sandman, the great risk communicator, identified over 20 of these factors which defines attitudes to risk and there is at least a half dozen here that explain why people are getting so upset, including the immediacy of the risk, the lack of control (passenger vs driver), the voluntariness of the risk. In this case there is an (unrealistic) expectation that every aircraft on every flight is 100% serviceable. Joe and Jane dont want to hear about MEL's, but Joe and Jane got their information from the media, who got outraged on their behalf. When you and/or your airline fail to communicate the risk adequately, there is no way, as pilots, that you can stuff that cat back in the bag.
And I suppose me telling you all this doesnt help much either.