Michael Smith adds some perspective to death statistics

"I'm not trying to minimize the deaths from the Coronavirus pandemic but when I heard a report yesterday that now in New York, one person dies every 17 minutes due to the disease and that it could get to one person every 9 minutes.

So I checked to see if I could find comparable numbers anywhere on the CDC's website and here's what I found:

Mortality reason #1:
Number of deaths: 36,338
Deaths per 100,000 population: 11.2
Death rate - 1 person per every 15 minutes - comparable to the current mortality frequency of the pandemic in New York.

Mortality reason #2:
Number of deaths: 64,795
Deaths per 100,000 population: 19.9
Death rate: 1 person every 8 minutes - comparable to the predicted mortality frequency of the pandemic in New York.

Mortality reason #1 - unintentional falls.
Mortality reason #2 - unintentional poisonings.

One might think the moral panic is being stoked by the way this pandemic is being promoted in the media.

I don't know how to get people to look at this pandemic with any sense of proportionality - there's just too much fear out there that blocks any sense of rationality."