The panic was that the situation would cause drastic harm, not that it wasn't a real issue. The fact that they fixed the problem is exactly the reason why it was overblown. (according to the article, anyways).
With (e.g.) the Y2K example, things were fixed due to massive amounts of money invested in fixing the problem. If every says "Y2K wasn't a big issue, we really shouldn't invest in fixing the next problem" that will cause issues down the road...
