but they were resolved with far less real damage to mankind than some imagined.
Again: the problems got fixed.
If the world hand not worked on fixing the Y2K "bugs" plenty of stuff would have stopped working.
A million line of code has roughly 2000 Y2K bugs.
if (XX > YY) doSomethingImportant();
This does not work if XX is 00 and YY is 99.
But should for XX = 2000 and YY = 1999.
It is not really a complicated concept.
The companies running software with Y2K problems paid trillions to fix the problems, hence the world thinks (just with same with COVID), why the damn panic? Nothing happened?