Nobody is going to loose their shit if we find a bunch a alien bacteria on Mars or some fish swimming in Europa. It’ll be front page news for a few weeks then everyone will forget about it, like every other major scientific announcement or historic event that doesn’t effect them directly.

The fact is, there’s a not-insignificant percentage of people who are so out of touch with space news they believe NASA already confirmed the life exists/existed on Mars back in the 90’s. If people are so disinterested in the concept of alien life that they can’t be bothered to actually do some research into whether alien life has actually been confirmed or not then NASA suddenly announcing that life does/did indeed live on Mars at some point isn’t going to even register.

The idea that civilisation will somehow collapse because we found a bunch of dead animals on a rock millions of miles away is a meme made by people who clearly haven’t seen how disinterested and oblivious people can be to any situation that isn’t directly effecting their lives. People will either accept the information and get on with their lives or ignore it exists entirely like they ignore many other scientific issues.