The key offender here is something called “relative risk.” If there’s a one in a million chance of something happening, that’s a minuscule absolute risk. If it goes up to two in a million, it’s still a minuscule absolute risk that you really won’t get bothered about. But that same difference can be presented as a 100% increase in risk or a doubling, which sounds really awful.
When it comes to COVID, the overall rate of death is in the tenths of a percent in the most vulnerable population. Headlines about Republicans killing off their voter base are simply scaremongering in the decimal points using relative instead of absolute risk. The real rate of death under age 50 for COVID is “indistinguishable from zero” according to the weekly British monitoring service.
