I'm interested in why people are downvoting. Is the conclusion wrong? I'm unable to view the subreddit and the barrage of downvotes on seemingly correct comments does nothing to explain what it actually is.
Which policies in particular do they find 1984-esque?
Also I'm not sure where 99.97% is coming from, I'm getting ~98.3% from the CDC's Data Tracker page. Of course unreported cases could increase that, but it still seems significantly different from whatever source that's from.
I don't think that he is implying that COVID == 1984, but rather that there are some massive (surface-level) similarities between the handling of the COVID pandemic and general US policies and the policies in 1984.
There is also a hefty dose of "if seatbelts work why do i have to wear one by law, why isn't other people wearing one enough" type of logic.