I know the US (330 mil. pop.) is a much larger country than Switzerland (8 mil. pop.). You also could have said: "The cost of improving the Swiss housing and in

I know the US (330 mil. pop.) is a much larger country than Switzerland (8 mil. pop.). You also could have said: "The cost of improving the Swiss housing and infrastructure to reduce the mortality rate due to fire would be a miniscule fraction of what it would be in the US". You have to normalize to look at these things, and you also have to look at the bigger picture, or you could totally mislead yourself. Put in normalized terms, - 0.00028% of the Swiss pop. dies from fire annually - 0.00116% of the US pop. dies from fire annually - 0.001% of the US pop. dies from drowning annually - 0.001% of the US pop. dies from exposure to mechanical force annually - 0.006% of the US pop. dies from gunshot annually - 0.01% of the US pop. dies from falling annually - 0.015% of the US pop. dies from road injuries annually - 0.03% of the US pop. dies from respiratory illness annually Here's [0] a visualization I made of causes of mortality a few years back. Play around with this a little bit; it's pretty interesting looking at actual mortality rates. [0] http://bl.ocks.org/MattTriano/raw/154e9c142504d61985e2b65287e389be/ http://bl.ocks.org/MattTriano/raw/154e9c142504d61985e2b65287...