Your implication seems to be that COVID-19 is a "very small unusual danger"; but, your 650k number is in line with the (upper end, reasonable) estimates for how

Your implication seems to be that COVID-19 is a "very small unusual danger"; but, your 650k number is in line with the (upper end, reasonable) estimates for how many lives it might take in the USA, this year. And heart disease is certainly something all of us should and do worry about. The point of the article is that the pandemic has opened the world of possibilities for these humdrum "oh it's just how the world is" social harms. Many things have been written off as impossible to fix, as it's too expensive for society to afford. But COVID-19 has shown that society can afford to dedicate huge amounts of social resources toward saving lives; particularly, we have the capacity to set a much higher value for USD/QALY that we're willing to save. E.g. eliminating HIV/AIDS mortality in the US and even the world becomes almost trivial with that amount of resources, using known technologies. Deaths from accidents? Stress from debt or unemployment? A bit trickier, but we can imagine putting a significant dent in them.