All cause mortality? I very much doubt it’ll protect you from car accidents or bear attacks.
Improvements in all-cause mortality mean that if you sum up all causes of mortality, the risk goes down, not that all causes decrease.
For example, if the only ways to die are car accidents or bear attacks, with equal probability, a self-driving car that perfectly avoids all accidents would decrease all-cause mortality by 50% even though it doesn’t do anything to prevent bear attacks.
An improvement in all-cause mortality is a useful metric because it avoids mistakes where you take an action that decreased one cause of mortality while raising another. Like how drinking poison would lower your risk from car accidents and bear attacks by 100% but would presumably raise all-cause mortality.
Improvements in all-cause mortality mean that if you sum up all causes of mortality, the risk goes down, not that all causes decrease.
For example, if the only ways to die are car accidents or bear attacks, with equal probability, a self-driving car that perfectly avoids all accidents would decrease all-cause mortality by 50% even though it doesn’t do anything to prevent bear attacks.
An improvement in all-cause mortality is a useful metric because it avoids mistakes where you take an action that decreased one cause of mortality while raising another. Like how drinking poison would lower your risk from car accidents and bear attacks by 100% but would presumably raise all-cause mortality.