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Three Everyday Problems Which Are Bigger Threats Than The Coronavirus

Anne Zieger
4 min readMar 9, 2020

In his widely-read book on protecting yourself from violence, “The Gift of Fear,” author Gavin de Becker describes how people focus on high-profile events and tune out day-to-day threats:

We all watched as bodies were carried away from the Oklahoma City bombing, and by the end of that week we learned to our horror that nineteen children had died in the blast. [Meanwhile,] seventy children died that same week at the hands of a parent, just like every week–and most of them were under five years old.

Our reaction to the spread of the coronavirus follows the same pattern. In our reacting to a high-profile issue, we lose sight of other problems that might be more destructive over the long term.

While I’m not suggesting that checking the spread of the coronavirus isn’t important, we shouldn’t forget that there are everyday dangers that might pose a bigger danger to your health and well-being. Here are a few to consider.

Car accidents

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 125 million people die worldwide in automobile accidents each year, or an average of 3,287 every day. Another 20 to 50 million are injured or disabled.

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Anne Zieger
Anne Zieger

Written by Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger has been a writer for almost 30 years. She's interested in life, the universe and everything.

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