Only my close family are whitelisted.
Most time people call twice during an emergency. You could also say to call back again in case of emergency in your voicemail message.
I have stranger phone call anxiety and the other thing is spam/scam calls. Which thankfully my phone has been good at flagging/blocking.
Regarding notifications I used to have phones that either had LED blinking indicators or sound/beeping ahh, crazy used to just drop what I was doing to check it.
I know others probably can't do that, but it works great for me.
I've added my family members to that exception list, and leave the phone on do-not-disturb mode 24/7.
I guess it basically comes down to: how likely is a call from an unknown number to be important for me? It turns out this is wildly different for different lives.