The vast majority of the affected airbags that have deployed, have done so with no shrapnel related injuries. It's probably safe to assume that injury and death have been avoided or reduced in at least some of these cases due to proper inflation of the bags. What do you suppose would happen if the automakers had disabled those airbags?
You sign a waiver and they disable the air bag until repalcements are available, or perhaps Honda gives you a free loaner until parts are available? Or Honda shows you the fuse to pull and lets you disable the bag!
Bottom line is Honda knew about the high defect rate and covered it up, they also knew takata had very poor traceabilty of the air bags in both their own manufacturing process and OEM, ie didnt know which bags were built on which equipment, people and worst off were installed in what cars. This shows Honda doesnt really have a very good quality control.
Co-worker's son has a 14 CRV and the wife insisted they buy it, now she doesnt want to drive it! I told him find out which fuse power the bag and pull it. was told it might be 2-6 months before they receive enough parts to affect the recall LOL