Comment by howinteresting

Let's look at years of life lost, then, shall we?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3

> YLL in heavily affected countries are 2–9 times the average seasonal influenza

And that is after all the societal changes to deal with the disease.

I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu after mitigations clearly justified the mitigations.