What most people keep missing is that Ryzen performance varies greatly based on the RAM used.   Do you benchmark with DDR4-3200CL16, 3200CL14, 3600CL16, or what?   Different reviews, even by the same web site don't have a consistent set of RAM used, and it isn't displayed clearly with the benchmark without digging.   

The benchmarks where Ryzen 3rd generation is closer to the performance of the 9900k in single threaded are run with DDR4-3600 RAM, and 3200 RAM gives a bigger lead to the 9900k.   There haven't been nearly enough comparisons to show this, and newbies who don't know are being mislead, or at least, they are not being told that you can get much better performance from Ryzen with better RAM.   Now, if we could get 2x8GB DDR4-3600CL14 RAM for $200, people wouldn't be buying nearly as many Intel chips.