Anyway, I am pretty sure this wave is going to be over soon and we will go back to normal the moment this hype is gone just like any other sort of hype/fomo we had in the past, more things will come in the future and clog the network for a few days and then disappear, I don't think we need to worry about it, it will resolve on its own.
I get the same sense that "we" are not in "emergency status" yet merely based on some high fees and some delayed transactions, and surely there are a lot more tools (other avenues to transact / abilities to monitor nuances) today as compared to what was happening in late 2017 and into early 2018 (backlog mostly resolved by the end of January 2018).
If any of us might believe that some kind of an "emergency status" exists, then we are going to consider that emergency measures might need to be taken, and surely we had not seen any kind of a sustained fee spike since February - even though this last go around in the past week or two has built up a pretty decent sized backlog, yet interesting to see if the fees are going to be sustainably high.. and the backlog will sometimes allow for the miners to start eating into the backlog and it is not like the miners are not processing transactions - which would be another issue if there were a bunch of blocks with zero or near zero transactions.
Of course, trying to look on the bright side would be if there can be ways in which more lightning wallet services develop and build, and even if some of those "emergency status" developments might have more KYC, there are also ways that many of us can be inspired to run our own nodes too.. and then just having funds in various places in the case that we want to transact.. and surely worse for individuals/businesses who may well have developed their own systems and habits based on expectations that on-chain transactions would stay at or near 1 sat per vbyte or expecting that the worse case scenarios might cause the higher fees to be 50 to 100 sats per vbyte, when we are currently having those levels of new transaction attempts being rejected within that 50 to 100 sats per vbyte range - which might have had been the top of the expected price range for some people (maybe especially some of those who are currently more upset and/or feeling locked out of carrying out onchain transactions because they are feeling priced out).
Of course, coin control is empowering, even if it might not exactly bring down the fees.. and even RBF is useful and helpful, even though that might not resolve issues, either, but individual users can be inspired to learn about wallets that have these options and to be able to figure out how to use such features, too.
To some extent, it might go back to Loyce's question.
One thing I don't understand: why do fees jump from say 200 to say 300, and not to 201? Is this still the default of many wallets? You can be ahead of the rest with just 1 sat/vbyte, and by making 100 sat jumps, everyone else has to do the same thing and still none of the transactions get confirmed any faster.
Coin control and knowledge about the transactions can help to resolve these kinds of issues, and yeah it could be frustrating if someone might be expecting to transact for around 200 sats per vbyte and then see that the next higher priority option that is being provided by the wallet is either try for 200 sats per vbyte or to go to 300 sats per vbyte, and if everyone does that it can seem like a pretty big ass problem, but it is largely a bigger ass problem for people who have such a low time preference that they cannot figure out how to coin control their transaction.. and yeah, if you are dealing with strangers you might want the transaction to go through in the next block versus being able to low ball the transaction in terms of sending to yourself or to a trusted (known) person.