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Covid-19 has a non-negligible chance of killing a billion people. When there's risk of ruin, cost-benefit analysis doesn't make sense anymore. (Russian roulette is never worth playing, regardless of the payoff.)

Our actions to avoid covid-19 need to be judged on what could happen, not on what actually happens. You get it wrong once, and we disappear.

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It’s has a fatality rate of 1/7? Be reasonable man.

1. 20% require hospitalization. Hospital capacity is limited.

2. It's questionable whether we can become immune to it. We might keep getting re-infected.

3. It causes permanent lung damage in some patients. Makes re-infection even more lethal.

4. There's a chance that animals can catch it and become a reservoir for it. Imagine if every dog, cat, and pigeon in the world is infected with it, but doesn't die from it.

Yes, it's low probability. But it's not zero. And it's not negligible either.

If untreated, the fatality rate goes up. I imagine OPs figure is assuming widespread contagion and the average 20% hospitalization needed, which would translate to A LOT more dead people. We won’t know the actual death rate after the fact, of course, or how it compares in places where health care is saturated vs not. But that figure isn’t/wasn’t entirely impossible?

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