Your initial estimation was probably right - the press just likes to emphasise the negative. We've already had more deadly and more obvious versions of Covid-19

Your initial estimation was probably right - the press just likes to emphasise the negative. We've already had more deadly and more obvious versions of Covid-19 in the form of SARS and MERS, and for the most part western countries just quietly stopped them using testing and contact tracing without most people even noticing. If Covid-19 was similar, there's every reason to believe that it would've ended the same way since pretty much everywhere put those same measures into place early on. You just didn't hear about it much because early on it wasn't of interest to the press, and later it made for an easier narrative to claim that countries inexplicably did nothing.