My gut feeling is that if you look at these data they'll tell you "most people should focus on eating well and getting good amounts of exercise." They might also tell you "kids should learn water safety skills and comply with car seat safety rules scrupulously".
It's hazy now but I remember doing some back-of-the-envelope math in April 2020 to compare risk of death via SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. other causes. I think what I remember seeing was that if you're age 80+ getting COVID is similar to driving 10 million road miles in the US (NHTSA: 1.5 deaths per 100 million road miles; COVID: 15% mortality for infection in ages 80+). I think I remember being totally unable to evaluate the risk to a kid but maybe COVID infection is similar to driving 3000 road miles? (per upper bound at https://fullfact.org/health/bbc-children-covid-risk/). This mostly told me that driving was very risky.
Problems with comparing road miles to disease infection:
(1) being infected also means you're infectious; dying in a car crash doesn't spread exponentially to others
(2) I do not know how to reason about the long-term side effects of COVID on quality adjusted life years
> I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.
I do a qualitative analysis of this every couple of years: should I bike to work?
(1) Cardiovascular fitness improves from exercise
(2) You might get hit by a car and die (worrying about this adds stress even if you don't experience it).
It's hazy now but I remember doing some back-of-the-envelope math in April 2020 to compare risk of death via SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. other causes. I think what I remember seeing was that if you're age 80+ getting COVID is similar to driving 10 million road miles in the US (NHTSA: 1.5 deaths per 100 million road miles; COVID: 15% mortality for infection in ages 80+). I think I remember being totally unable to evaluate the risk to a kid but maybe COVID infection is similar to driving 3000 road miles? (per upper bound at https://fullfact.org/health/bbc-children-covid-risk/). This mostly told me that driving was very risky.
Problems with comparing road miles to disease infection:
(1) being infected also means you're infectious; dying in a car crash doesn't spread exponentially to others
(2) I do not know how to reason about the long-term side effects of COVID on quality adjusted life years
> I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.
I do a qualitative analysis of this every couple of years: should I bike to work?
(1) Cardiovascular fitness improves from exercise
(2) You might get hit by a car and die (worrying about this adds stress even if you don't experience it).