PR, as it's being used here, doesn't increase awareness of security in general, it only increases awareness of a single, specific issue. There are many more maj

PR, as it's being used here, doesn't increase awareness of security in general, it only increases awareness of a single, specific issue. There are many more major security issues that don't get branded and hyped up, they just get solved. Would you have all major vulns receive the same level of PR? If so, there would be a C-SPAN style, 24 hour channel constantly discussing the latest issues. This channel would not be commercially viable as the majority of people would ignore it. No amount of PR for individual issues will increase the public's awareness of the real problems. The media coverage of Heartbleed was particularly useless, as it didn't tell anyone what they should, or could do. The sysadmins updated their systems, the developers patched their libraries, the general populace just worried non-specifically about something they couldn't do much about. I would also like to point out that the human race survived without PR for thousands of years. It's not "absolutely essential" for anything.