The issue is that it happens out of sight out of mind so it's just an abstract statistic that it's easy to ignore or pretend away. If Covid-19 killed you by making your head spontaneously fall off we'd have eliminated it or reduced it to a few tiny isolated pockets simply by the change in the public's attitude to it. But because it kills you "quietly" out of sight in a hospital bed or at home, people were able to just convince themselves everything is basically normal.