A common question when looking at the healthcare recommendations is: Why have we shut down the country for a virus that is going to kill 60,000 people, but we don’t for other things like traffic accidents that killed 39,000 people in 2019?
I was outside yesterday afternoon, and it was a beautiful day here in southern Florida. I looked into the blue sky and it was one of those times of day in which both the sun and the moon were visible. If I used my eyes and my brain, I could make a couple of clear observations. First, the moon moves much faster than the sun; it rises, moves across the sky and sets all while the sun only moves a short distance. Second, the moon is much bigger than the sun.
But, you say, the moon only APPEARS to move faster and be bigger because it is closer to the earth. The whole solar system, revolving around the sun is also revolving around our galaxy, the Milky Way. What? How do you know that? Can you be sure, because I know that I have never been out near either and I can’t say for a fact that that is true? Oh, that’s right, science has done a lot of measurements and tests, so we have a pretty good idea, called a theory, that the moon is closer to the earth than the sun.
Let’s compare traffic deaths to CV-19 deaths. How should we compare them? What are the issues in comparing the two?
PREDICTABILITY
The first issue is whether you can predict the event. With traffic deaths, it is impossible to predict whether you will be in an event when you leave your house, but it is statistically predictable in a general population about how many people will die per year. That predictability is the reason that you are able to purchase automobile insurance. With CV-19, we simply cannot predict how many people will die tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. Actuarial models do not exist.
Self-isolation will reduce traffic deaths during the period or isolation, but self-isolation will only delay deaths from viruses until treatments or vaccines are available.
REGULATIONS
Because we can measure traffic fatalities, we can easily understand what actions can affect the rates. Increasing safety features in cars, improving roadways, reducing speeds and enforcing traffic rules all can demonstrably reduce fatalities. With CV-19 we have very few ways to reduce fatalities other than isolation. Remember, masks DO NOT protect YOU from becoming infected, they only protect you from INFECTING OTHERS. Gloves only protect your hands from picking up or depositing viruses on surfaces. Touching your face with a glove is not much safer than touching it with your hand.
TRANSMISSABILITY
If you are in a traffic accident, whether you survive or not, there is absolutely no increased chance that someone who was driving in a car near you earlier in the day would have an accident today or tomorrow. With CV-19, if you are infected, there is a very significant chance that someone that was near you earlier in the day will also become infected.
STATISTICS
This is probably the most misunderstood part of the question.
Let’s take a little closer look at the numbers to better understand the errors in logic.
A good example to look at is New York State.
New York has a population of approx. 19 million.
In 2018 (the last full year of data), in New York there were a total of 433,604 reported traffic accidents.
Within those accidents, there were 169,736 reported injuries (about 40%).
Of those, there were a total of 915 fatalities (about 0.2% of all accidents, or 0.5% of all injuries)
Comparing those numbers in terms that we are using for CV-19:
In New York State in 2019:
2.3% of the population was “infected”
(experienced a reported traffic accident)
60% of the infected population was asymptomatic
(had an accident with no injuries)
0.2% of the diseased population (accidents) died.
The total accident numbers are probably a little bit lower than the actual number of accidents, since there is a fraction of those fender benders that go unreported. We can make some assumptions about that inflation factor, but it most likely is far less than 10% of all accidents because of insurance reporting and police attention.
These accidents and statistics, with minor variations are pretty much distributed evenly across the calendar.
New York State reported its first death from CV-19 on March 15. As of April 16 (32 days later) there were about 230,000 documented cases and a total of about 13,000 deaths. So, let’s compare those numbers to the traffic data above:
1.2% of the population was infected
? we don’t know how much of the population was asymptomatic and undetected. (A very conservative estimate would be that at least 5 times as many people were infected than were actually documented through testing.)
5.6% of the diseased, died.
And, remember that those numbers take into consideration the extensive stay-at-home actions of the population. I think it is reasonable to assume that the numbers would have been far higher if there had been no self-isolation.
Nevertheless, the lethality of the CV-19 infection is much higher than with traffic accidents.
Now, MOST IMPORTANT is the distribution of fatalities. Traffic accidents, as we discussed are pretty much distributed evenly across the calendar. So, the 915 fatalities in the year, would equate to only about 80 fatalities during the 32-day period in which there were 13,000 deaths from CV-19 this year.
Finally, if we suspect that there were actually 500,000 traffic accidents in New York in a year (adding an additional 15% over the reported accidents), that represents a total of about 44,000 accidents during the 32-day period studied.
This compares to 230,000 documented cases of CV-19, or as much as over 1,150,000 actual cases over the same period, 26 times as many viral cases than traffic accidents.
And, the 13,000 CV-19 deaths during that period is 163 times greater than the expected traffic deaths during the same period.
Bottom line: The moon IS NOT larger than the sun. It DOES NOT move faster than the sun. CV-19 danger IS NOT equivalent to Traffic fatalities.