I'm not sure why. The Virus is currently 50x more deadly than cars (in Michigan, for example, about ~100 people die from car accidents each year, but 5,000+ people have died from COVID-19 across just half of 2020.)
Those numbers don't include secondary diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer (and other pollution related effects), etc. You can also argue based on the comorbidity data that automobile use has contributed to the death rate from the virus. The virus might kill people quickly, but cars kill people slowly (and quickly). People are only afraid of the unlikely cause of deaths, but tend to ignore the likely causes.
Right, but a pandemic like this may last 1 or 2 years. Driving a car goes on for a lifetime, and for most demographics highway driving is the single most dangerous activity they ever engage in.