Did expected carrier losses mean ships sunk or disabled?

Did the expected carrier losses mean ships sunk and unrecoverable, or ships spending the rest of the war in dry dock?

Sunk and unrecoverable, rather than merely out of action for the rest of the war.

The estimate belongs to a hypothetical wartime assault on Soviet submarine bastions. The follow-up asks whether a carrier counted as lost might instead spend the rest of the war in dry dock. The reply explicitly means sunk and unrecoverable carriers.