The death rate is much higher than that. We have significant undercounting. (USA)
We are likely beyond 1million deaths in america, assuming 200 million infected, that's a 0.5% death rate. which is enormous. And this is the wide estimate. The CDC estimates around 83 million infected, which would make the death rate 1.2%.
Under existing conditions, it only took 1 year for the virus to Mutate into Delta which has up to 1250x viral load.
What happens in another year? There is still the 3rd world with very little vaccine availability. The mutation will continue.
Yeah, I initially had a little burb at the top of my post saying my numbers were probably outdated at this point since I'd been writing bits of this over the past few weeks, but the post was already really long, so I omitted that. Edit: Actually, I did state those numbers are different with Delta on the individual bullets, but I didn't look up the new stats.
In my county, the mortality rate was 1.08% according to the health department's stat tracker, but that only counts up to February of this year (no idea why the stat tracker is that out of date), but when I do the math on the latest numbers myself, it's 1.44%. The next largest county is 1.5%.
I may be wrong here, but the good news about mutations, from what I've heard, is that they are somewhat naturally limited. Since the vaccines target the spike protein, as long as it doesn't mutate too much, the vaccines will still provide protection, and that protein can only mutate so much until it can't bind to the ACE2 receptor. If it can't bind, it can't replicate, so those mutations naturally select themselves out. Vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections would presumably develop antibodies to the other proteins in the virus, boosting their immunity to whatever future variants may come. I don't actually know anything about science, so I'm could be totally wrong about that.
But anyway, there's only so much we can do as individuals, and one of those things is talking sense into other individuals in a kind and logical way. You can't win everyone over, but I hope my thoughts above can at least win some over. As bad as it is, recognize that most folks don't care about the rest of the world and see this as their choice and their choice only. Individual rights come with individual duties, but no one is taught that anymore. You have to meet them where they are.