99% of cases are harmless

Yep, that's what the Resident said. Obviously we know that isn't so -- it isn't entirely clear what the percentages are because we've never done enough testing but something like half of the people do get sick, maybe 20%  end up in the hospital, and 1-2% die. Something like that. (Deaths from Covid-19 are clearly underreported; many are attributed to other causes. But that's for another day.)

But we pay far too much attention to the reported deaths. Hospitalization is very expensive, it crowds out health care resources and so harms people with other conditions, and it causes prolonged absence from work and other responsibilities as well as causing people to be horribly miserable for a long time. It turns out, however, that the situation is worse than that. Many people, even people who had what is termed "mild" disease and were never hospitalized, are experiencing prolonged, maybe permanent, misery and disability.

Doctors now know that Covid-19 not only affects the lungs and blood, but kidneys, liver and brain – the latter potentially resulting in chronic fatigue and depression, among other symptoms. Although the virus is not yet old enough for long-term effects on those organs to be well understood, they may manifest regardless of whether a patient ever required hospitalization, hindering their recovery process.
Another troubling phenomenon now coming into focus is that of “long-haul” Covid-19 sufferers – people whose experience of the illness has lasted months. For a Dutch report published earlier this month (an excerpt is translated here) researchers surveyed 1,622 Covid-19 patients with an average age of 53, who reported a number of enduring symptoms, including intense fatigue (88%) persistent shortness of breath (75%) and chest pressure (45%). Ninety-one per cent of the patients weren’t hospitalized, suggesting they suffered these side-effects despite their cases of Covid-19 qualifying as “mild”. While 85% of the surveyed patients considered themselves generally healthy before having Covid-19, only 6% still did so one month or more after getting the virus.

So you really, really do not want to get this. You really, really do not want to give it to anybody else. You do not want your friends, family or even people you don't particularly like to get it. The long-term consequences to population health may be profound --  massively prevalent misery and disability. How long will people experience these symptoms? We don't know yet, but some of this may be permanent heart or lung damage. The linked Guardian article also says that some people have strokes after "recovering." So you must take this seriously. It is not the flu. It is not just about the death rate. Stop wishing it away. And for those who know better, stop lying about it.