Indeed. I'm not saying the investors didn't have downside. Many did, and many of them lost everything (as they should have). But the public also bore a tremendous cost, and that makes the threat of another such crisis a public issue.
Additionally, if the public at large is losing then someone out there is winning and that entity will see these crisies as profit opportunities instead of disasters.
As a high schooler, I remember buying citi stock for $2.60 or something like that. Just an anecdote, but my teenage self just said, “come on. It’s still a bank!”