One Covid case has the mortality of three car crashes

[unblock]

The current mortality rate in America for a Covid case is 1.4%.

https://covidusa.net/

Mortality rate of a car crash is about 0.5% (34,247 out of 6,452,000)

https://valientemott.com/blog/chances-of-dying-in-a-car-crash/


So when right-wingers take a cavalier indifference to the possibility of them infecting other people with their unvaccinated lungs and unmasked mouths and noses, what they're saying is they have a right to slam their car into ours *three times* and we have no basis for complaining.

After all, the survival rate for Covid is pretty good, right?

Yeah, well, the survival rate for car crashes is even better but we take many precautions. We even require seat belts and airbags. Plus, both car accidents and Covid can cause great damage even if you survive. I still have I'll effects from a car accident I was in nearly a quarter century ago.


To be fair, these statistics lump everyone together, regardless of age or vaccination status. Or whether wearing a seatbelt or not. And some car accidents cause multiple fatalities so it's not quite apples to apples.

But we certainly have a very different attitude towards reckless endangerment involving cars than reckless endangerment involving Covid.

[mainer]

1. Is that 1.4% of ALL patients, including the vaccinated?

I would be interested in the mortality rate of just the unvaccinated patients with COVID.

[Shermann]

2. 2.94 car crashes to be exact!

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+.95%5Ex+%3D+.86+for+x

[mainer]

3. I just looked up death rates for vaxxed vs unvaxxed

Note: I misread the chart. These numbers are death rates / 100,000 in that particular week, not percentage death rates per infected patients.

But the death rates for unvaxxed/vaxxed remain 7X higher.

You can find it here:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination

In the US, the death rate for vaxxed (all vaccines together) is 0.54%
The death rate for un-vaxxed is: 3.47%

So if you're not vaccinated, the mortality is like being in 7 car crashes.

[unblock]

5. thanks. interesting that the mortality rate for vaccinated people is close to that of a car crash.

which means that vaccinated people who think "well i'm vaccinated so i'm immune" and then act as if the pandemic is over for them are signing up for the equivalent of getting in a car crash in terms of mortality.

still plenty of reason to remain cautious, prudent, and careful, even if you're fully vaccinated.

[progree]

8. The 0.54 and the 3.47 are death rates per 100,000 people for one week

not percentages.

United States: COVID-19 weekly death rate by vaccination status, All ages
Death rates are calculated as the number of deaths in each group, divided by the total number of people in this group.
This is given per 100,000 people.

If the 0.54/week per 100,000 rate, if constant for a year (52 weeks), that would be 28/year per 100,000, or 0.028%/year

Similarly the 3.47/week per 100,000 rate, if constant for a year (52 weeks), that would be 180/year per 100,000, or 0.18%/year

Why they seem so low is that it is percent of total population, not the percent of the Covid-infected. Well the chart, table, and "sources" don't make that clear so it's my guess.

Thanks much for the link.

Edited to add

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Cumulative since the beginning of the pandemic (nearly 2 years):
859,046 deaths, 60,954,028 cases, = 1.4 deaths per 100 cases (1.4% rate)
U.S. population: 332 million
859,046 deaths / 332 million = 0.26 per 100 population (0.26% rate)
This isn't an annual rate since this occurred over nearly 2 years...

[mainer]

10. Thanks for clarifying!

My mistake.

[progree]

12. 👍 /nt

[brewens]

4. I applied COVIDiot logic to drunk driving. I like to be drunk; you like to be sober.

You have brakes and a steering wheel to get out of my way. If we do crash, you have airbags, seatbelts and insurance and a car crash is 99.5% survivable.

[Hortensis]

6. Actually, most car crashes don't kill or even gravely injure ANYONE.

We build cars pretty well these days.

[unblock]

7. Yes it's probably even better than the official stats

I'm guessing their total number of crashes is based on crashes that were actually reported. Plenty of minor fender-benders never get reported at all.

I once had an elderly couple roll into me at about 2mph at a stop light. No damage other than some chipped paint I didn't feel like worrying about, so we just went on our merry way.

But some of the analogy works. The possibility of death is hardly the only reason to try to avoid a car crash. Both are unpleasant experiences, to say the least, and there can be long-lasting physical effects from both Covid and car crashes.

[PTWB]

9. The same can be said for most COVID cases. Especially if you're vaccinated.

The data is in the OP.

About 0.5% of car crashes are fatal. About 1.4% of COVID cases are fatal. Therefor, the OP is correct--a case of COVID has about 3 times the mortality rate of a car crash.

[Hortensis]

11. Gotta go soon, but but one Covid case being as deadly as

3 car crashes is making my smell meter twitch. Ouch!

Many people have no idea they had Covid, most cases are mild, and stats are notoriously unreliable anyway. Accident stats are far better documented, though what constitutes a "crash" to produce this statistic?

Btw, right now another thread suggests it's a big lie that social and educational deprivation from two years of lockdowns are harming America's children. It's getting a lot of enthusiastic approval.

Pod invasion. I am going to try to escape town.

[unblock]

15. as noted, many car accidents are unreported, just as many covid cases are as well.

part of my motivation in drawing this analogy is that the pro-covid people have fixated on the high survivability rate -- 98.6% officially -- without caring about the non-death harm that covid causes, including many how have long-term after-effects.

car crashes have comparable survivability rates -- 99.5% officially -- but everyone accepts that there can and should be much care and much regulation to avoid car accidents. this perhaps because we understand car accidents much better as we're far more familiar with them than with pandemics. and people understand that car accidents cause great damage even if they don't kill anyone. people seem of overlook that aspect of covid.


if you want to find better stats that maybe show the ratio is 2:1 or 1:1 or whatever, that's fine, i'm more than willing to accept that my numbers are crude and imperfect.

it doesn't affect the main point. even if the death rates were the same, even if the ratio were reversed, the point is that both things have very high survivability rates, yet we recognize the harm of car crashes and take great precautions against them. we should do the same for covid.


as for education, we tried to get distance learning for mini-unblock, as omicron rates are staggeringly high, and were denied.
so we reluctantly sent her in.

she reported that all but one of her teachers are substitutes and pretty much the entire day was a joke.

i recognize that distance learning isn't perfect, but just just sending kids back to school as if the pandemic were already over is insane.

to my mind, distance learning is a lousy alternative to pre-pandemic schooling, pre-pandemic schooling isn't an option right now.

distance learning may be a bad idea, but in-schooling during a pandemic is an even worse idea.

[paleotn]

14. Depends on the car crash....

At 30 to 45 mph on city streets? Yes. At 70 to 80 mph on interstate highways? Not so much.

But I don't think that was the point of the OP. Are you saying that since car crashes don't kill all that many people, nutters should feel free to spread their pathogens? Or are you saying it's just a bad analogy?

[paleotn]

13. Same thing as driving drunk.

[Zeitghost]

16. The 1.4%

Does not count the millions of undiagnosed or unreported cases. Especially now that many vaccinated people have mild symptoms that don't lead to medical care. I know dozens of people who have had it in the last few weeks, including myself and my family, all used home testing that go unreported.

[unblock]

17. i recognize that the stats are imperfect. as noted, some car accidents go unreported as well.

especially if they're below the insurance deductible or if someone wants to just pay cash to avoid points or insurance hassles.

but it would take massive amounts of unreported cases even to change the 3:1 ratio to 2:1, which doesn't really affect my main point.