Certainly nobody is making the following fictional argument: "I'm not going to die anyway, and it's better for you to be dead than for me to be socially isolated."

Nobody is saying that.

I just don't agree with the analysis. If I had a choice between a 2% chance of dying and isolation for the rest of my life, I'd roll the dice.

But it's not the rest of your life. It's just until we come up with a treatment or a vaccine, most likely a year or two. Yes, that's an annoyingly long time, but still better than being dead.

There's no way we should trust a dystopian regime to just quietly abolish itself once its rationale for existence disappears.