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This is a commonly asked question. There might be reasons to dispute the 99.8% figure with respect to COVID, but for the sake of the argument, let’s assume that the survival rate is indeed 99.8%. Why should we care about a virus with such a high survival rate?
Absolute vs. relative numbers
The first reason is that 0.2% might seem like a tiny percentage, but in absolute numbers, it amounts to a lot of deaths. If everyone on Earth gets infected, that would cause 0.2% times 8 billion people – that’s 16 million deaths – almost three Holocausts!
This alone would warrant taking the virus seriously. But that’s not all.
Deaths are only the tip of the iceberg
For each person who dies of a virus, there are many who get hospitalized and many more who spend some terrible days in pain. Some might even develop chronic illnesses as a result of their infection.
This pain and suffering further add to the reasons to take a 99.8% survival rate virus seriously.
Direct and indirect deaths
Even if the virus had a 100% survival rate, it would cause plenty of deaths. That’s because if enough of the infected require hospital treatment, high community spread might result in hospital overwhelm, which in turn results in healthcare capabilities to treat other illnesses.
So, for example, even if COVID didn’t kill anyone (as long as serious cases get hospital treatment), we might still see a large increase in all-cause mortality during a pandemic due to, e.g., cancer patients receiving worse treatment and thus dying at a higher rate.
What about focused protection?
Can’t we just protect the vulnerable and let the rest of the population act as if there was no pandemic?
Not really. One reason is the one highlighted in the previous paragraph – even if the most vulnerable were fully shielded from the virus, letting it run free in the general population would still cause hospital overwhelm and, therefore, still increase mortality amongst the vulnerable. Unless we extend the definition of vulnerable to something like 50% of the population – but in that case, it wouldn’t be much different from a lockdown, and the isolation would potentially have to last much longer.
Conclusions
This article explained why even a virus with a 99.8% survival rate must be taken seriously, if its contagiousness is high (which is the case for COVID). If viral spread is high, it will cause a large amount of deaths, even if mortality is very low.
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