driving a car is more dangerous than the coronavirus

Author: n8nrgmi

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#1
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i googled the stats. you have a .9% chance of dying in a car. you have a .7% chance of dying from the coronavirus, and that's assuming you catch it. 

so what can we concluded? well, we should still wear masks, and if someone is vulnerable, they should social distance for sure. if your local hospital is over crowded, you should be extra safe too. but what about everyone else? should you not socialize with your friends and family, if they are not vulnerable? that would be like saying "i'm not going to socialize with my friends and family, because i might die in the car on the way there, or vice versa". 

so basically, if you think about it, if you dont want to live in fear, you might as well socialize with your healthy friends and family 

if you disagree with this approach, why dont you stop socializing with your friends and family due to the car ride involved too?
#2
HistoryBuff
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@n8nrgmi
i googled the stats. you have a .9% chance of dying in a car. you have a .7% chance of dying from the coronavirus, and that's assuming you catch it. 
assuming your stat is accurate (which i didn't double check), this is only true under the best case scenario. IE if your hospital is fully staffed and has sufficient beds and medicine to help you. If hospitals get overrun with cases, if the nurses and doctors are sick themselves, if the hospital runs out of ventilators etc, then the mortality rate spikes. 

additionally, this stat doesn't reflect the full picture. lots of people who don't die of covid can still have long lasting or even permanent damage done by the virus.

So for the purposes of your stat it is either die or you don't. But in the real world it is much more complicated than that. 

so basically, if you think about it, if you dont want to live in fear, you might as well socialize with your healthy friends and family 
this is an extremely irresponsible way of looking at it. healthy people can die of Covid. Healthy people can be permanently injured by covid. And if lots and lots of otherwise healthy people spread the virus, then hospitals get overrun and the rate of these things happening spikes. 

if you disagree with this approach, why dont you stop socializing with your friends and family due to the car ride involved too? 
two things really

1) the risks of driving are largely under my own control. If I obey speed limits, i don't drive drunk, drive safely etc, the odds of me dying are pretty low. I can choose to drive safely and the increase my odds of being safe. Even if you take all safety precautions, you can still spread covid at a family gathering. You will not be able to control the risks. IE someone coughs before handing something at dinner, then you touch your face and now you have covid.

2) my choosing to drive to see my family, isn't going to kill anyone else. Unless I am driving recklessly, the odds of my choosing to visit my family hurting anyone is very low. With covid, you could be sick and not even know it. And you could easily spread that virus to your family and kill them. Or get the virus from your family and spread it to others, killing them. And by spreading covid at your family gathering you are increasing pressure on the healthcare system increasing the odds that more people will die or be permanently damaged by the virus. 

#3
Death23
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@n8nrgmi
~38,800 deaths in 2019 from car accidents
~300,000 deaths in 2020 from COVID-19
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#4
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@HistoryBuff
you had three main points worth addressing. 

one you said that a person could be permenately damaged by by the virus. that's true, but it is also true with driving. so this point is a wash, it's a moot point in trying to differentiate my analogy. 

two you said hospitals might be overstaffed. that's true, but i did say a person might want to be extra safe if their local hospital is over staffed. the main reason hospitals are getting overstaffed, is due to the virus... but it's mainly due to them already being pushed to the brink, and the virus putting them overboard. i think i heard once that it was like only one in four people at some overstaffed hospitals have the virus. that means it's just a structural problem, not that socializing is inherently too dangerous. 

your last point was decent... you said some people choose to drive safe, so their risk isn't .9%. so from that i would say, yes maybe i personally wouldn't want to socialize too much, and extra cautious people might not want to, but what about the average person with an average amount of risk taking and an average driving ability? well, on average, they're less safe from driving to socialize than they are from the virus in socializing. 

i can see you are extra cautious, so i'll change the question to you.... why should the average person stop socializing with healthy people when all things are considered? 


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#5
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@Death23
the risk from dying from a car accident is spread out over a lifetime. so take 40k car deaths, and multiple it by 78, which is the average life expectancy. covid only looks intimidating cause it's happening all at once. 
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@n8nrgmi
one you said that a person could be permenately damaged by by the virus. that's true, but it is also true with driving. so this point is a wash, it's a moot point in trying to differentiate my analogy. 
no, i meant that your stat comparing deaths is misleading. it makes it sounds like 99% of people who get covid are fine, when that is absolutely not the case. 

two you said hospitals might be overstaffed. 
I think you misunderstood. I mentioned if the hospital was fully staffed in reference to the doctors or nurses being sick. The main point was that if there are too many cases, then the hospitals can no longer handle the volume of cases. At that point the mortality rate spikes as there aren't enough beds or ventilators to go around. 

i can see you are extra cautious, so i'll change the question to you.... why should the average person stop socializing with healthy people when all things are considered? 
a) because they could die. 
b) because they could kill the people they care about 
c) because they are contributing to a national crisis that could potentially kill millions. 

The better question is: is it worth seeing your family when there is the very real chance you could kill them while also contributing to the deaths of lots of other people?

the risk from dying from a car accident is spread out over a lifetime.
wait your stat is a lifetime? You are comparing apples to oranges then. You are comparing someone's changes with surviving a specific event (getting covid) with someone's chances of dying of something over the course of decades. Those are extremely different things.

#7
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@n8nrgmi
Having COVID-19 is more dangerous than driving a car. Why would we go to a lifetime comparison? It is not meaningful or actionable in everyday decision making.l to look at it that way.

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#8
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i will concede that given the vaccine is imminent, maybe everyone should be extra safe in the mean time. but i still maintain that if the vaccine was uncertain, and for some average people in average situations, it's not so far fetched to think we could still socialize with healthy people. 
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@HistoryBuff
i messed up my question to you.... i should have asked, shouldn't the average person in an average situation stop driving to socialize even when the pandemic is over? based on your logic. 
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@n8nrgmi
i will concede that given the vaccine is imminent, maybe everyone should be extra safe in the mean time. but i still maintain that if the vaccine was uncertain, and for some average people in average situations, it's not so far fetched to think we could still socialize with healthy people. 
that depends on how much you value seeing your family. Is it worth millions of dead people? Is it worth the death toll of 9/11 (or worse) every single day? because that is where we are right now. with christmas gatherings on top of this, it is likely to spike even higher. 

i messed up my question to you.... i should have asked, shouldn't the average person in an average situation stop driving to socialize even when the pandemic is over? based on your logic. 
no. because the stats you supplied are entirely inconsistent. IE you have .9% chance of dying of a car crash over like 75 years. You have a .7% chance of dying of covid by next month if you catch it. and considerably higher than .7% if people stop taking safety precautions (like avoiding gatherings) and the healthcare system gets overrun by cases. 

Whether or not you go to a family gathering in an average year is unlikely to kill anyone. And even if it did, the affect it would have would be minor (obviously not to your direct family, but to society as a whole). Going to a family gathering now is likely to contribute to a global crisis and make it much worse. Your actions could help to drive the crisis to a breaking point. Which is extremely irresponsible. 





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#11
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@HistoryBuff
the only way my analogy can work, is if we assume a hypothetical that experts dont think a vaccine is possible. in that case, your lifetime risk is safer in driving to socialize than it is from your lifetime risk of the virus in socializing... for the average person. so the only way a person would be consistent in not socializing because of the virus, is if they stopped driving to socialize too, or at least asked others not to drive to visit them too. 
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@n8nrgmi
the only way my analogy can work, is if we assume a hypothetical that experts dont think a vaccine is possible. in that case, your lifetime risk is safer in driving to socialize than it is from your lifetime risk of the virus in socializing... for the average person.
again, no. because a car crash is a one off event. The people who are harmed in it are the only people who are harmed. You catching covid is not a one off event because you can then spread it. And the people you spread it to can spread it. etc. A car crash might kill a few people. A party could potentially kill dozens. 

Also, you seem to be assuming it is a single event. IE you get covid, you live, and so it's over. The evidence suggests you can get covid more than once. So you could get it, survive, then die from it next month when you catch it again. 

Car crashes and the spread of a virus are simply not very comparable events. 

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#13
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@HistoryBuff
well for every analogy's similarity there is a greater dissimiliarity. but that's for all analogies. i maintain the similiarities are greater than the dissimilarities. point nine percent is greater than point seven percent, so driving is overall on average more dangerous than the virus. now, to your point... if a person can catch it several times, that does change everything, cause then their risk jumps by a lot, but it sounds like the science on this point isn't very conclusive so we cant say one way or the other on this point. i would concede my analogy fails if the science was as you say. 
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@n8nrgmi
point nine percent is greater than point seven percent, so driving is overall on average more dangerous than the virus. 
no. .9% is spread over an entire lifetime. the .7% is for a single event. They are not remotely comparable stats.

now, to your point... if a person can catch it several times, that does change everything, cause then their risk jumps by a lot, but it sounds like the science on this point isn't very conclusive so we cant say one way or the other on this point. i would concede my analogy fails if the science was as you say. 
there are documented cases of people catching the virus multiple times. So it is certain that it is possible to catch it multiple times. how likely that is remains to be seen. 


But ultimate, the main flaw in the comparison is the scale. IE a drive is a risk primarily just to you. A party is a risk to everyone there, as well as any other friends, colleagues or family members they come into contact with in the days or even weeks following the party. A party can easily cause an outbreak among dozens or even hundreds of people. A few of those parties in a small area and suddenly the hospital can be overrun and alot of people can die. 

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@n8nrgmi
A really big problem with your stat is that there are high-risk people that you can quarantine for covid whereas almost everyone including kids (who have near no risk of covid) are at risk of dying on wheels when they get inside 2 tons of high-speed steel.


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whereas almost everyone including kids (who have near no risk of covid)
this is a wildly untrue statement. Most people are at risk from covid. Especially if there is a surge in cases which overtaxes the medical system. At that point alot more otherwise healthy people would die from it. 

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@HistoryBuff
How many kids out of 47 million died from Covid?

How many kids died this year on wheels?

Accidents (unintentional injuries) are, by far, the leading cause of death among children and teens.
The automobile accounts for the largest number of accidental deaths. All infants and children should use the proper child car seats, booster seats, and seat belts.
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How many kids out of 47 million died from Covid?
you are correct the children appear to be much less likely to be affected. But i said "Most people are at risk from covid", and that statement is still true.

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#19
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i see that there is a dissimiliarty in that a single gathering can kill a lot of people, but the bottom line is that the life time risk for everyone is worse with driving than it is with the virus. even if everyone at a party got in contact with the virus, their odds dont suddenly go up. that is, they all still have a .7 percent chance of dying if they catch it. so basically, if there was no chance of a vaccine, i think socieity would just shift its expectations.... it will assume everyone must accept a lifetime one percent ish chance of dying if they are going to socialize much at all, just as we accept a lifetime one percent chance of death from driving if you drive much at all. 
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@n8nrgmi

 Of the 20,360 deaths among children and teens that year, motor vehicle crashes accounted for 4,074 lives lost and one-fifth of all deaths.

As the United States’ covid-19 death toll moves relentlessly beyond 200,000, data shows that only about 100 children and teenagers have died of the disease, a fatality rate that is drawing wonder from clinicians and increasing interest among researchers hoping to understand why.
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@n8nrgmi
i see that there is a dissimiliarty in that a single gathering can kill a lot of people, but the bottom line is that the life time risk for everyone is worse with driving than it is with the virus.
no, you haven't shown that at all. Your stat compares the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash to the odds of dying from a single event (contracting covid). if you wanted to compare numbers you would need to compare the odds of dying in a specific trip to dying of covid. which would be something like .0000001% to .7%. 

even if everyone at a party got in contact with the virus, their odds dont suddenly go up. that is, they all still have a .7 percent chance of dying if they catch it.]
not true. The .7% includes the healthiest of people and children in it. IE the people least at risk of dying. If you gave covid to your grandma she has a much much higher chance of dying. 

additionally, if you passed it to that many people around the same time other people did the same (IE christmas) then you are significantly increasing the odds the hospital gets overrun and alot more people die. 

so basically, if there was no chance of a vaccine, i think socieity would just shift its expectations....
if there was no chance that there would ever be a vaccine, you are probably right. With no possible solution to the problem one of 2 things would happen. Eventually millions would die and we would reach herd immunity. Or society would permanently change how we do things. IE social distancing, masks etc would be mandated forever. 

luckily we don't need to find out because there is a vaccine. 

it will assume everyone must accept a one percent ish chance of dying if they are going to socialize much at all, just as we accept a lifetime one percent chance of death from driving if you drive much at all. 
you keep ignoring the critical point. alot of Hospitals are basically at maximum capacity right now. they can't cope if things keep getting worse. and things are still getting worse. that .7% assumes there is enough doctors, beds and ventilators for everyone. We are very close to point where that is no longer the case in alot of parts of world. and once we are past that point the mortality rate could easily double, or more. 
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@n8nrgmi
I don't think we are anywhere close to an accurate assessment of COVID-19's scope, impact, or risk.  We are seeing significant increases in deaths from heart attack, diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney failure, etc. that aren't COVID but seem clearly related but not yet understood.   Just because you didn't die when you got infected doesn't mean you wont die from the organ damage COVID does down the road.  Even infected people who never had a symptom in 2020 may yet die from this disease years down the road.  We know some will but we have no idea how many will.    Doctors predict that people who had the disease may have a significantly shorter life span than people who successfully avoid infection. We should also keep in mind that diseases like this can mutate into deadlier or more persistent forms.  We have the capacity and technology to shut down the virus to a quite manageable state but we lack the discipline to refrain from society for 6 or 8 weeks.

In places were more than 2% of the population was infected, life expectancy numbers are expected to decrease in the short term.   So when Americans look back on 2020, we will note that China took a hard economic hit for 8 weeks in a fairly oppressive and illiberal fashion, but then reopened slowly and will now close the year already out of recession and with a likely increase in Chinese life expectancy for the year while the US will see a decreased life expectancy and a recession for at least a couple of more quarters because half of the US keeps thinking up new reasons why they can't just hunker down for 6 to 8 weeks.  Why isn't economic recovery and improved life expectancy a sufficient reason to inspire  the requisite small acts of self-discipline and personal hygiene from every citizen?