> If 1% of the world dies from it, that’s hundreds of millions of people dying from something in addition to everything else already killing people.

You seem to have a very unconventional estimate of the world population. 1% of 8 billion is not hundreds of millions.

Anyway, overall current (non-COVID) mortality rate is around 1% annually as well, mostly elderly people as well, so even if in an extremely unlikely and tragic case this will kill 1% of the world population, expect twice as many people you know to die compared to a regular year.