I always thought that things were being blown out of proportion a little with this current situation so I wanted to look at how CV compares to other problems in our society.

A simple google search shows that about 500,000 people die each year in the US due to smoking related complications.
There are an estimated 34 million smokers in the US

In 5 years, there will be 2.5 million deaths due to smoking or just over 7% of the smoking population.

Meanwhile the current estimated mortality rate of Covid is estimated to be in the range of 0.5% (this number varies, but is definitely less than 1%).

So what does that mean....

If every person in the US were to get CV19, we would expect it to kill about 1.6 million people... the same number of people as smoking kills in 3 years.

Or put another way....

A smoker who does not have CV19 is 14 times more likely to die in the next 5 years due to smoking related issues, than an infected non-smoker has of dying due to CV19.

I find those statistics very sobering and helps puts things in perspective.

That is about the dumbest comment I've ever read....

Lives are lives regardless of whether they die of a contagious disease or something else. What these have in common is that both deaths are preventable.

... please don't get the intention of my initial post wrong... I'm not trying to downplay Corona, just putting things in perspective.

That's my point (and why I looked in to this).... My wife's best friend is so paranoid about getting the Rona that he will only drive with the windows closed, and only if it's an absolute emergency.... the same guy is a chain smoker who has multiple DUI's.