I do think it’s important to consider the pros and cons of any given policy, but I think this comparison is a bit extreme. There are about 35k car crash deaths

I do think it’s important to consider the pros and cons of any given policy, but I think this comparison is a bit extreme. There are about 35k car crash deaths in the US each year [0]. I’ve seen estimates for total infection rate all over the map. Conservatively (?) if 30% of the US population is eventually infected and the fatality rate is 1%, that’s 1 million people, and basically two orders of magnitude larger for a comparable (?) time period. If we don’t do more than we currently are to limit transmission, these figures don’t seem that implausible. Auto deaths are still a huge problem, but we can take more targeted action like improving transit coverage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...