The original estimates put COVID-19 at approximately 3-4%. At the time I'm writing this post, the United States has had 253,309 deaths from 11,789,304 cases, or 2.14%.

Without the lockdowns, without the mask mandates, without social distancing, without closing establishments where people congregate, COVID-19 easily overwhelms healthcare systems. We saw this play out in Wuhan, New York City, Italy, and elsewhere. When the healthcare capacity is overwhelmed, the results are catastrophic.

It's all well and good to say, "well, 2% isn't as bad as we thought." But that's not how it is. The problem is that with 10-20% of all patients requiring hospitalization, the hospitals can't keep up. Healthcare is a finite resource. It's not just the COVID patients who suffer, it's everybody who needs hospitalization for anything.

It is foolish to act as though this isn't as bad as it is.

  We now know that Covid is not nearly as deadly as was first perceived

That seems to depend on where you live. The 250k deaths from 11M infections number in the US is putting it within the original estimates. If you assume the actual case count is 2x or 3x the tested positive number, then its still roughly 1%, which will result in a lot of early deaths. If your over 50 then you should be taking it very seriously.

If the vaccine numbers are right, it could literally save over a million peoples lives just in the US.

1917 people died from COVID-19 yesterday in the US, alone. That's a 9/11 of deaths every 36 hours. It might not be as deadly as was first feared, but it is deadly.