Because many people they knew didn't wash safely back on the shores.

Is 1% "many"?

1 percent of the world population is 78 million people, that is many, even if you try to make it seem small by using percent. Each of those people were a member of a family, a mother, brother, father, son or similar to someone.

But by your reckoning it's not many, and given Hitler killed 6 million Jews, which is a lot less than 78 million, he didn't kill that many either.

As of now, 5.5 million people worldwide died of Covid over the past 2 years (give or take a few million due to bad reporting).

It's an enormous loss of life, but a tiny number for a worldwide pandemic, especially given current travel technologies that would have made ancient plagues orders of magnitude worse than they were.

In comparison, we're talking about the targeted, deliberate, highly organized extermination of two thirds the entire Jewish race in Europe.

Is millions? And what about the millions of others who washed backed up but have become disabled and can’t work?

Millions out of what? Big scary number without context says nothing whatsoever.

Millions out of us.

The ICUs are full. Millions have died. Millions more have long covid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Enough with this fear mongering bullshit please, what are you trying to achieve, is it fun to spread panic? Show a proper statistically significant excess mortality, or stop talking about people dying.

Three statements of fact were presented.

It is another fact that excess mortality has been shown, clearly and repeatedly.

It is also a fact that there is a theory in psychology that anger stems from fear.

Oh please stop acting like you are some genius for figuring out that 1% can seem small. Would you accept 1% of Jeff Bezos wealth? Or is that too small for you?

I am pointing out a) that some people doing fine is not proof that no one need be concerned, and b) there is separate reason for concern. If the pandemic had not initially been treated as a political problem but as a public health problem a lot of suffering would have been spared. And to call making these points "fear mongering bullshit" is to continue treating it as a political problem.