Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a little like terrorism. You can have tens of thousands of people die from cars, smoking and obesity. But if a fraction of that dies from terrorists the whole country changes. If one child gets hurt from a slide or abducted by a stranger the whole country changes to avoid this risk but all the other risks are silently accepted.
Absolutely. I did the math recently to come up with a comparison for how many people heart disease kills. Suppose the Columbine massacre had never stopped. Rather, all day, every day, the same rate of death kept happening as during the 49 minutes of the attack. You would need 5 of those continuous attacks ongoing at all times in order to be equivalent to heart disease in the US.
As gruesome/horrifying as these sorts of calculations are, I do take your point. We often get overly worried about unlikely dangers when obvious ones are staring us in the face.