Some Much-Needed Coronavirus Perspective
On its own, 3,000 fatalities might seem like a tremendously large number. But that’s before you learn that an average of 7,700 people die in the U.S. every single day. Which means that over the past week, when the coronavirus took 2,000 lives, nearly 54,000 people died from other causes.
As a service to readers, here are recent annual deaths from other causes, many of which go largely unnoticed year by year, but most of which are preventable. (The data are compiled from the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Safety Council, and other sources.)
1,900: strep throat
3,000: food poisoning
5,000: choking
6,946: accidental hanging
7,450: pedestrians hit by a car
7,740: obesity
12,316: pregnancy-related
20,108: inflammation resulting from food or liquids getting into the lungs
35,000: antibiotic-resistant bacteria
35,823: alcohol-induced deaths
36,336: falls
40,922: blood poisoning resulting from bacteria
47,173: suicide
55,672: flu and pneumonia
64,795: accidental poisoning
83,564: diabetes
121,404: Alzheimer’s
160,201: chronic lower respiratory disease
169,936: all accidental deaths
250,000: medical errors
599,108: cancer
647,457: heart disease
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/31/some-much-needed-coronavirus-perspective/