Accidents rob you of 200 times more of your life than COVID19

A group I've never heard of, Just Facts, has done an interesting analysis.

Instead of looking at how many people are dying today from the Chinese virus they looked at how much of one's life each of us is statistically likely to lose due to the virus and other sources.

The reasoning is that if 100,000 Americans die from coronavirus that means that the odds of any one person dying are about 1 in 3000.  Hence few people will actually lose a day of their lives due to the virus.

Additionally the virus is not going to be a threat forever. Already we're seeing potential cures.

But accidents, suicides, and the flu will be with us forever.

Here's their plot showing the number of years of life lost to various sources:

This graph assumes that 240,000 Americans die from COVID19.  The impact of the virus is so much less because the vast majority of people who die from it are old and hence lose fewer years than the victims of accidents who tend to be much younger.

The organization does point out that the 240,000 figure assumes that we practice isolation and social distancing because if we don't many more elderly will die.

Hence the point of this isn't that we can act as though the virus is nothing but that we shouldn't panic, especially people who aren't old and/or who don't have preexisting conditions.

Further this sort of analysis has to be an input to any decisions about stepping back from the economically drastic policies we're currently pursuing.

Of course on the plus side the large bar, accidents, is probably going way down now that no one is driving.