Many people have talked about the risks of dying from COVID and it's no surprise given that the death toll is sky rocketing to levels now way past even the worst flu season and has no signs of tailing off.
I think it'll be useful to take a look at the relative risk of dying from COVID vs some other "extreme" sports. These are just two examples where I put myself in relative danger all the time, and what their risks are compared with COVID.
So far, the stats would give us a conservative value of fatality rate of COVID as 0.5%.
| Activity | Risk | Probability of Dying |
|---|---|---|
| Skydiving deaths | 4 / 1,000,000 jumps | 0.0004% |
| Base jumping deaths | 432 / 1,000,000 jumps | 0.0432% |
| COVID-19 deaths | 5000 / 1,000,000 cases | 0.5% |
Given those numbers:
- The risk of death from COVID-19 is approximately the same risk of death as making 1250 skydives.
- The risk of death from COVID-19 is approximately the same risk of death as making 12 BASE jumps.
This of course does not include the risk that the aftermath of COVID-19 can include long term damage to the body, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention what we all already know: the risks are much much higher if you are in an at-risk category.
I'm neither trying to magnify the risks of COVID-19 nor downplay the risks of skydiving and BASE jumping. (I spent years involved in both sports). Those two sports felt like a good way to communicate the relative risk of dying from COVID-19.
Source for BASE jumping fatality stats is here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17495709
Source for skydiving fatality stats is here:
https://uspa.org/find/faqs/safety