For those who can’t grasp just how close this was in celestial terms think of it this way. It takes 52 weeks for the Earth to circle the Sun. In two weeks the Earth only covers 1/26th of that orbit. The event missed the Earth by 1/26th of it’s orbit.
That's certainly correct and "everybody" knows 1/26 is a very small number. What everybody doesn't know is just how large earth's orbital path is Ie: 584,336,233 miles. So a small fraction of a large number is itself a very large number in comparison to the diameter of the target.
584,336,233/26 = 22,474,470.5 miles Earth's diameter is 7,926 miles so the near miss was 22,474,470.5/7,926 = 2,825 Earth diameters! Putting it in those terms is more edifying for most people.
In addition to coronal mass ejections, we have gamma ray bursts, city sized asteroids, chemical/biological/nuclear weapons systems in the hands of suicidal terrorists, a global pandemic, genetically modified foods, a financial system based on quicksand, and a political system rapidly circling the drain.
Since the first three are a crap shoot and there is currently nothing we can do to avoid (narrowly or otherwise) them we must just acknowledge their probability and move on to things we can do something about.
Regards,
GtG