You are almost better just sitting on your hands and letting it blow over because more often than not something new will come along the next week to preoccupy them.
I've been the topic of national and international news before - for approximately 48 hours before. It was a bit surprising to me myself mentioned in the Daily Mail. Had reporters blowing up my email and phone. I ignored them all. Within just a few days the focus had moved on to something else. I had made the mistake of saying a certain group of people weren't monsters but in fact their good intentions had been exploited by a bad narrative.
The ultimate impact on my own life was negligible, most attention and hype are an illusion. Despite being the subject of dozens of large papers, less than ten people have ever asked me about the event in real life. Collectively we have been conditioned to react to whatever the current topic is and then move on to the next reaction. Our attention span is increasingly transitory.
Traditional social media in many ways is a badly made tool for humans. It is deforming our perceptions, and our faculty of reason.
Your last point is a very good one. What used to be 48 hours is likely a lot less now due to the volume and speed that new things get posted on social media.