You're acting like the most "well acsually" person ever. You see the word "never" and don't understand that people routinely use this word colloquially not to literally mean "there was zero cases in history of humanity". Maybe they shouldn't do that, maybe people should use "almost never" to mean "almost never", but they aren't.
If you want to engage with meaning of what the person you're arguing was saying, instead of hanging up on a technical usage of the word, their point was that sensationalist media and crazy usually religiously motivated groups love misunderstanding teenagers stupid humour, and making a big panic out of basically nothing. All the kids who really physically put tide pods in their mouths even for a second for a stupid video, can fit into one short bus. But the panic around it was so widespread, you could get an impression that everyone is popping them like tic tacs. That is a classic example of a moral panic.