This truly appears to be primarily and perhaps completely caused by mass hysteria and not any actual drone swarm of any kind. There remains the possibility that there were unauthorized drones in sensitive areas, but that does not appear to account for most of the reports.
After spending hours looking for any videos of the supposed drones in New Jersey and elsewhere, I was surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of the sightings seem to be clear, unambiguous and completely doubtless examples of civil and commercial aircraft.
This reminds me very much of the battle of Los Angeles, which was not actually a real battle but rather just an example of similar mass hysteria. We are seeing similar hallmarks to previous flying phenomena hysteria, including a mushrooming number of reports and increasing drama as more and more people are convinced that drones have crashed, are attacking or something else.