Relatively small compared to the impact for severe cases, but it looks very relevant if you consider the amount of people that are getting COVID and that many governments and societies are basically throwing the towel and accepting that people should just catch it.
Covid infections aren't the only thing that happened. Lives changed and access to medical care was reduced. Both could easily explain the slight increase in health risks.
I also didn't see them compare the contemporary control group to 2017. The majority of the contemporary control group probably were infected with Covid. If there were a significant impact they should have different outcomes than the 2017 group.
This isn't a representative sample of the general public. Per supplementary tables 1-2, the average age of the participant was over 60, and had multiple co-morbidities. We know that age is the #1 risk factor.
The people in the "hospitalized" cohort, in particular, were quite old and sick prior to the disease.
