I'd say the "near-misses" were a few orders of magnitude less severe.

This virus is extremely uncommon in that it is both severe, highly transmissible and a completely new type of virus.

I really don't think most people in developed countries would have agreed to spend a couple Billion Dollars to have reserves in the healthcare system, including ventilators, hospital beds and personnel, in order to prevent a problem a couple of magnitudes bigger than anticipated.