> very deadly

Covid wasn't "very deadly" at all.

The base variant killed millions of people. It wasn't the Black Death, exactly, but it was pretty dangrous.

Now, if you want something that will keep you up at night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npf-B5Av7aQ

It was too contagious and not nearly virulent enough to be an ideal bioweapon.

GP put "ideal" in inverted commas, and qualified with "best we could make with current technology". I doubt they disagree with you.

This paper puts some numbers around that, looking at death rates before a vaccine was available.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...

Without a vaccination, it killed 12.9% of people who were infected, killing mostly older people and people who had multiple pathologies (eg. hypertension).

Something that contagious that kills ~13% of people infected is something I would argue is quite deadly.

Especially when half of adults in america are hypertensive.

It doesn’t kill 13% of people infected, only about 1%. Just look at the number of cases reported compared to the number of deaths. That paper was reporting 13% mortality rate among those admitted to the hospital, not among all those infected.

That’s 12.9% of hospital inpatients. All estimates I’ve seen for infection fatality rate — that is, mortality rate among all those infected — place it around 1–2%