Kinda. It would be like if all you knew of cats were vicious lions, then one day a house cat came about and a journalist correctly called it a cat. Is your perspective wrong or baseless? Absolutely not, in this world most cats are lions and can rip your face off. Your perspective just hasn't expanded yet to include the docile cat, so of course you react in fear.
You aren't at fault, neither is the person telling you that both lions and house cats are both cats. Over time, these early misunderstandings iron themselves out, and everyone sees a lion for a lion and a domestic cat for a domestic cat. Ignore the early public recoil from any new concept, it's not worth fretting over.
Microwaves operate using standing waves (that's what does the cooking). Wi-Fi doesn't.
People who say "WiFi is like a microwave" aren't trying to educate other people about the EM spectrum. They're trying to fearmonger by saying "WiFi is cooking you like a microwave".
Or, as I suggested, they simply misunderstand. It's not a difficult analogy to respond to. Many people have microwaves, and they're safe, even though they even leak some of their radiation. We have standards for microwave emissions just like we have standards for wifi power limits.
WiFi is a lot like a microwave, just with some important differences. WiFi is just modulated and about 1/1000th the power.
There are real reasons why SAR regulations exist.
I blame the misunderstanding squarely on journalists who picked up early stories about SAR limit studies and did an awful job of explaining them.