I don’t really know what you mean by “media pundits”. Some forms of journalism are biased and opaque, others are less so. You can’t just make a sweeping generalisation and say that someone listening to commentary from a variety of reputable balanced sources has been misled because “media pundits”.

Your on-the-ground insights are obviously something I don’t have, being that I’m in Australia, but they are of course anecdotal. There’s a lot of polling and research that doesn’t really support your perspective.

If you want to believe your direct insights rather than the accepted science, then I don’t really have much to say to you - that’s how people end up believing in a flat earth.