“You look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody no more driving of cars.” Donald Trump
I’ve heard this same ridiculous meme repeated on social media comparing the deadliness of the virus to car accidents but it’s a bad analogy and wildly off the mark! Anthony Fauci the leading voice on the president’s coronavirus task force called it “a false equivalency” and “totally way out.”
The number of annual deaths from car accidents in America has hovered for many years at an average of 38,000. To date we’ve surpassed that number of deaths from the virus at 65,510 with 1,124,676 active cases still pending in the U.S.
So first of all, how do we know how many people will eventually die in the pandemic? You might’ve noticed that it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. Unlike car accidents, COVID cases grow exponentially. One car crash doesn’t lead to many others like the virus, which we saw jump from 8,000 to 50,000 in a week throughout the world!
Can anyone imagine the deaths from car accidents increasing at that same pace? If they did, I have to believe that someone would want to push for some limit to driving.
Secondly, cars and their drivers don’t infect one another like virus carriers do. Imagine this. All cars have a shared operating system that malfunctions forcing them to accelerate uncontrollably. Accidents all over the place!
Then let’s say the malfunction (like a virus) begins to jump from one car to the next, increasing the number of accidents exponentially. Don’t you think then that there would be a massive mandatory recall of cars, putting them by the millions in the shop until they could be repaired and allowed to be on the road again?
But where the analogy between cars and COVID really falters is in the span time in which we’re observing these deaths. 65,510 Americans have died of COVID-19 in the last 8 weeks compared to a much smaller number of deaths in cars over the span of an entire year! If auto deaths came at the same rate there would be something like over 320,000 in one year!
Can you imagine the strain on hospitals and their staff in such a situation? But even then, we couldn’t logically compare car deaths with the virus, since people injured in cars aren’t contagious. They wouldn’t put doctors and health-care staff at risk of injury or disease like COVID does.
Do cars really kill more people than COVID? As Fauci said, “It’s a false equivalency” and “totally way out”!
Then you have television psychologist Dr. Phil, who also claimed the car accident analogy and inflated the number of deaths on the road from 38,000 to 45,000 per year. “The fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that.” If you’re going to use an inane comparison, I say at least get your facts straight!
In citing 360,000 fatalities in pools the “good doctor” shifted from U.S. figures (which are reflected in the other two categories of car and smoking deaths) to a worldwide death rate from drowning! According to the CDC pool deaths in our country are more to the tune of 3,500. By bouncing from U.S. numbers to global the doctor’s data is inflated by over 100 times! It seems to me if you’re going to falsify the numbers at least be in the ballpark!
His way out of whack data aside, putting simple logic to his silly argument regarding drownings, unless there’s something I don’t know about swimming accidents, they’re not contagious! We don’t have drowning victims infecting one another and creating a pandemic of people dying in pools! So, stop it!
Why even make a point about these fables and fabrications regarding the Coronavirus and its lethality? First and foremost, it’s because actual lives are at stake. People watch this stuff (I had another word or two in mind instead of “stuff,” but I consented to my conscience and the Spirit to keep a clean tongue). People believe that the President of the United States, TV personalities like Dr. Phil and other famous media personalities wouldn’t lie to them, so they defy the mandate to keep their distance from one another, not only putting themselves at risk, but anyone with whom they have contact.
I also point these things out because I don’t think they, be it media celebrities or the President, should get away with lying to the public especially on such life-threatening topics.
“Save me [us], Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.” Psalm 120:2
barney wiget 