I don't like the media angle on this either as much as I dislike Johnson. In some ways I dislike Sunak more though. I say this as a Labour party member. We will see how things play out, I can easily see Johnson riding things out for at least another 6-12 months and I'm not convinced the local elections will be as catastrophic as they were for May in 2019 when the Tories lost 1000+ seats.
I wouldn't be so sure, in the last general election in the local seat (true blue) there was a significant swing towards the Lib Dems (not enough to reduce the vote share to much below 60%, but quite a shift as previously the vote share was over 75%).
In the last local (District) elections an independent for more votes than both the Tory Councillors (effectively unseating one).
Both of which were at a time when the Tories were riding high with Johnson in charge and not when there were memes with images of "office supplies" over the alcohol in a shop or a "I'm not a robot" grid overlaid on the Downing Street garden image with the caption saying "click on all images which show that it's a party".
Whilst I don't doubt that there were many who were breaching rules, the vast majority of whom doing so would have be small scale stretching of the limits (for instance 8 people during the rule of six, meeting 2 people rather than one, etc) and not inviting 100 people to an event.