Aside from general aviation concerns, that 747-400 will have young families, infants and children on board, whereas exposing everyone on that 747-400 to COVID-19 would mostly result in the deaths of the elderly and the infirm.
If we had an outbreak of Spanish flu with the same overall death rate it would not be as bad. It would be much worse. The deaths of the young who have their whole life ahead of them is a much worse outcome than someone who statistically would be dead anyway from old age or other disease in a few years.
This is intuitively understandable to every human being. If a 95 year old dies in their sleep we mourn them but think "wow, they made it to 95!". If an infant dies in their sleep it's a tragedy.
I genuinely don't understand why everyone has insisted on talking about COVID-19 in terms of absolute deaths. For everything else like heart disease etc. we talk about statistically "losing X years of life".
The median age of death for COVID-19 has been at or above the statistical life expectancy.
In the worst case we could have an outbreak of another strain of Coronavirus next year that'll kill 1/2 as many as COVID-19, but disproportionately target those under 10 years of age. Because of this nonsensical messaging people will think "oh, only half as bad as COVID-19".