A 98% survival rate would mean a 2% mortality, e.g. in the United States about 7 million, or in Israel about 160,000. That would definitely requires special measures, especially if it impacted on all ages rather than the elderly. In the US, it appears that Covid19 results in about 1/10 of a percent mortality.
Note that for testing vaccines, they changed the definition of having Covid19 to require not only testing positive, but having symptoms, and the even the placebo was 99% effective (though vaccines seems to reduce the chance of serious symptoms by 90%).