1, Sure it does stress the hospital system in a different way.

2, Whole heartedly disagree with. Covid has specific health risk factors (Obesity, Diabetes etc) that long term people have a similar level of control over as smoking. People also have direct control over how much risk they want to take; there are vaccines, there are therapies, there are N95 Masks & no one is forcing you to go to a bar/club/sporting-event.

3. I'm not going to attribute to Covid the panic and over-reaction because of its novelty. Just like we don't attribute to the 9/11 terrorists the destabilization of the middle east and hundreds of thousands of deaths.