The perspective is still out of whack on Covid-19

In 2018, 67,367 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States according to the CDC.

In 2016, diarrhea killed 1,655,944 people worldwide according to The Lancet.

An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications during the 2017-2018 flu season, according to the US CDC. An article in the Lancet suggests there were over 650,000 flu deaths worldwide during that same season.

In 2017, it was estimated by WHO that 435 000 deaths due to malaria had occurred globally.

Nearly 2.38 million deaths resulted from lower respiratory infections in 2016 according to the Lancet.

Smoking is the leading cause of premature death. Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year according to the CDC. In the United States, the number is 480,000.

Worldwide, 3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, while we lose 88,000 Americans year to the same issue according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse.

Approximately 1.35 million worldwide people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes according to WHO and 36,560 in the United States.

Coronavirus has been reported by Johns Hopkins database to be responsible for 17,252 deaths worldwide and 592 deaths in the United States and while those numbers are expected to rise, expanded testing, new treatments and other interventions have decreased the rate at which that number is increasing. Even if those numbers increase tenfold they are dwarfed by many of the annual numbers above.

Yes, this is a terrible virus and we must be aware and vigilant in keeping it in check. But it is not the worst thing we face or have ever faced in terms of the number of people who face the most dire outcome.