There's a very long way to go before safety is comparable. Last time I looked into it, you have better odds skydiving from a small plane than landing in it.

Most small aircraft accidents are completely preventable loss of control (either by taking off with too much weight, stalling during takeoff, or stalling during landing) or flying into IMC (instrument metereological conditions including clouds, fog, etc.) and becoming disoriented and losing control. Simple engine failure is something that every private pilot trains for.

Improvements in training can significantly help with both. Instrument training in particular drastically reduces the risks of inadvertent IMC. Some technology also assists with the latter (eg; synthetic vision on foreflight on aircraft with garmin G1000 cockpits gives you references for how the plane is positioned and any terrain around you you could hit).

Not at all, skydiving from a plane without a parachute is almost always deadly (very few exceptions) while landing with an engine failure is something every student practice in the flight school (at least in my country).

The smaller the plane, the easier to land it with an engine failure, the smaller the plan the fewer pieces that can break. yes, the average General Aviation pilot is quite bad, that explains the huge accident rate compared to airliners, but the reliability of the planes is not bad at all.

That's why I like gliders - one less component to fail (the engine) and every landing is an engine out landing, with the plane built and pilot trained to do that. :)

All pilots are trained to land with the engine out. Some are better and most are not, that's not the plane's fault. Yes, glider pilots are the best at this :)

I think they will. We won't be back to "normal" that soon, but when we are, it will be amazing how much we've forgotten about the recent past. We're usually living in the now, not in the past, and adapt and will fall back into the same patterns.