On the road to Ebola

[il padrone]

An interesting outlook on two 21st century crises.

Imagine your tax dollars going to ensure that live Ebola viruses were added to every municipal water supply — like we do with Fluoride — because of some purported public good. I’m sure city planners could think of something to make it seem modern. Across the world imagine building Water Ebolafication Facilities as a metric of human progress.

As far as the toll in human lives goes, this is in effect what we actually have done over the past century by designing — and defining — our public spaces to facilitate motorized transportation preferentially over human-powered transportation.

But there is another way to level the playing field between Ebola and cars: by reducing our exposure to cars. We could systematically redesign our towns and cities over a few decades to reduce or eliminate the de-facto necessity of using and/or mingling with cars.

From Commute By Bike

[diventare]

Site (ironically) blocked by antivirus.

[outnabike]

I suppose we can make comment on any thing to get attention. Why not the old favourites like bubonic plague, Spanish flue,VD,etc.
What a simplistic basic way to frame an argument. Now we have cyclist terrorists?

[il padrone]

You can keep your bubonic plaque/Spanish flu (they killed tens of millions), I'll take my chances with the ebola thanks


The argument of course is about the risk and severity of different threats to human life, and the extent to which our media, and we as citizens, distort the reality. Much as your death by drowning is a far greater risk than death from shark attack.

[fat and old]

Taken from the article

Has anyone offered to pray to keep you safe from cars?

Well, actually yes

I remember one church service I was at where the priest did just that during a sermon.

The part IP quoted makes sense, the only part of that article that did though.

[simonn]

What a load of something.

Motor vehicles are very useful, they are just very/extremely over used and, yes, dangerous. The upside of ebola is somewhat missing.

[il padrone]

Some do seem to miss the TIC aspects

[Mulger bill]

Some do seem to miss the TIC aspects

This...

[outnabike]

I get the TIC In the headline.
The thing is that comparing a deadly decease to bike fatalities seems to be a click bait. I just felt a bit uncomfortable about the similarly. But it works allright, and we all do it really with catchy means.
This thing may kill a million and a half people by Xmas or so. I don't think that world wide the same can be said for bikes even on a world wide basis?

I know the writer was not meaning any harm. Lets see if we get a revision after the new year though.

[il padrone]

This thing may kill a million and a half people by Xmas or so. I don't think that world wide the same can be said for bikes even on a world wide basis?

You read the article?? Or just missed the point??

Put another way: If the death rate from Ebola continues on its current exponential curve, it will only be about 15 weeks before Ebola is killing as many people worldwide as do automobiles — which is about 103,300 per month.

Stop and think about that. Automobiles kill about 103,300 people per month. That’s more than 30 times as many people every month than Ebola has killed ever — since the first confirmed case in 1976.

Maybe you have some new information about the disease spread that health authorities have missed. And BTW, the comparison is with motor vehicle-caused deaths, not bike-related deaths.

[Magnum9]

At least viruses and diseases exist as part of natural selection, road deaths do not.

[RonK]

TIC or not, it's just plain dumb...

[outnabike]

Beg yours ,yes should have related to motorist caused deaths.
I still think that at 103,300per month equalling say 410-000 people deaths by Feb 2015 and Ebola predicted to be 1,5 million by Feb 2015 the motorists have a bit of catching up to do. Proof...I have only the news reports and I imagine they are wrong. But not in a small sense. The authorities tend to down play the deaths in some things as they have seen from the past. Keep panic down.

I know nothing catches motorist deaths in the long run. Looking to save myself here.....

In Zimbabwe the authorities said aids was a lie while many we being infected.

Quote...Stop and think about that. Automobiles kill about 103,300 people per month. That’s more than 30 times as many people every month than Ebola has killed ever — since the first confirmed case in 1976.
But Ebola is very unlikely to catch up with the death toll of automobiles, because — unlike automobiles — we are confronting the Ebola menace in ways that will tame that exponential curve.End quote

Any way take it as I misread it, I thought I had a point , but maybe not.