> You think that's a big number, but it's not.

Yeah, but generally, your standard flu doesn't end the careers of about 6% of athletes who manage to catch it [1]. Covid is worse than the flu.

> People die.

Old people, yes. Young, healthy people in the midst of their careers? No. That's quite the misconception that has always stuck with covid, particularly as politicians focused on protecting primarily the elderly - the reality is, of all the US covid deaths, a quarter were people below pension age [2].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/https-wwwdwcom-en-life-with-long-covid...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

Death is a much easier statistic to track than dehabiltiation. The tens of millions of people who have long covid are statistically significant over the fewer dead.

But we do a lot to prevent that number from being higher.