It doesn't matter if the blocks are not full in average since there are times on the day where blocks are full all the time. Which means high fees are needed otherwise you have to wait. That is something new.
False. This isn't something new, it was always like this. If the recommended fee is 50 satoshis/byte and you include a fee that is 5 or more times lower than the recommended one then you should expect nothing. Since zero fee transactions won't have a effect on the people, the attacker was sending out thousands of transactions in the 1-10 satohis/byte range. Keep in mind that even though this range is way below the recommended fee, there are still some people transacting with such fees. The attack negatively affected those people and thus complaints arose. As a user it is your duty to include a proper fee. You can't blame the miners, the developers nor the network if your transaction does not get confirmed in X amount of time if you don't. Now ask yourself how long it takes that we reach the paypal fee threshold.
Doomsday 'fee event' coming, all panic now! Hyperbolic as always. 