When the investigation into those crashes reveals a shitload of corner cutting on safety regs, people are right to get skeptical.
When another version of the same plane made by the same company has an in flight blowout and the fleet is grounded AGAIN (yes i know just the 9s but remind me how many other companies have had entire lines of their plane grounded in the last 20 years), then yes I think it's reasonable to want to avoid any of their newer plane models as clearly the level of safety and quality appears to be declining.
Flying is still safer than just about any other form of travel, but that's basically because we mandated a shit ton of regulations and safety to make sure that even penny pinching corner cutting corps wouldn't have people dying in droves. Boeing has clearly decided to push that envelope and they deserve all the bad press they get for it and I fully understand people who already have a quasi irrational fear of flying freaking the hell out over this.
I would certainly not buy a car from a company that's clearly disregarded safety so badly, and would prefer avoiding being in one for any other reason (friends/rideshare/whatever).