Automobiles, Influenza and Covid-19: History Shows No Equivalency

Contrary to what some public figures have suggested, there is no equivalency between the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and its resulting deaths, versus deaths from automobile accidents and from the influenza (the flu).

Comparing a new phenomenon with automobile technology and an annual disease that have been around for a hundred years or more is misleading. As a historian of technology, science, and medicine I can assert that it is wrong to suggest that somehow we should regard the coronavirus pandemic death toll as the normal result of human endeavor.

Certainly the number of death...