COVID Doesn't Kill More People than Guns, Car Crashes, and the Flu Combined
The Claim
COVID-19 is killing more people than guns, car crashes, and influenza.
Emerging story
Bloomberg posted a graph on Twitter showing that COVID-19 is killing more people than guns, car crashes, and influenza combined. The post was then liked or retweeted more than 6000 times.
Misbar’s Analysis
While the headline of the graphic is simply put, Misbar discovered the actual Bloomberg graphic to be somewhat difficult to understand. In the graphic, COVID-19 deaths for the month of January 2020 are being compared to daily flu deaths over a 10-year period which are broken down by the day; all other deaths are from 2019, and are also broken down by the day. Looking at the image, one might think that COVID-19 mortality rates are greater than deaths from heart disease and cancer.
A less confusing comparison would be to look at mortality for the different causes for a similar time period (i.e. one year). According to recent mortality data for a 12-month period:
Heart disease (1 year average): 655,000
Cancer (1 year average): 606,520
COVID-19 (2020): 375,000
Guns (2017): 39,773
Car crashes (1 year average): 38,000
Influenza (2019): 22,000
When compared over the same time period, one year, then COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
However, since the COVID-19 vaccine was widely distributed over the last six months, breaking mortality down during this time period shows a much different picture. Now, when average daily deaths are compared, COVID-19 has dropped to the 7th leading cause of death.
When using the latest data, COVID-19 is not killing more people than guns, car crashes and the flu combined, with car crashes alone causing more deaths each day than COVID-19.
