There were 3,157 Covid-19 deaths reported Wednesday -- an all-time high for the pandemic -- and health care systems are struggling to support the weight of worsening impacts.
Right people talk about how folks in the restaurant industry disporportionately smoke and just think it's a quirk of the industry and not how the working class in that line of work deals with all the bullshit that they shouldn't have to all while making horribly low wages.
30,000 die every year from fucking cars slamming into each other and other shit. 500,000 (!!!) die from fucking tobacco diseases. every damn year.
At least with these deaths one can make some plausible argument in the form of "well there's a balance to be struck between safety and convenience, or safety and the desire to use intoxicants." Any sort of similar argument with covid falls flat when you look at how much better other countries have contained it.
Yeah, the cars argument isn't good, just plausible. At least cars have some benefit, and while a major overhaul of urban transportation would be far safer, such an overhaul would have real costs.
With covid, there are about a hundred ways to imagine a response that would save way more lives and be far less costly.
Civil engineer here: automobile deaths are an avoidable consequence of urbanism. We do have the power to design cities and roads and cars so people do not die as a consequence of transportation, last year in Stockholm not a single driver killed anyone. Zero people died due to automobile crashes in a city of 1.6 million. The reason that tragic violence exists, like the reason covid deaths occur is because of the systemic rejection of materialism in the engineering profession.
There have been massive improvements in vehicle safety since (as a point of reference) Ralph Nader published "unsafe at any speed." Over the same period we've seen a lot of policies put in place to combat drunk driving specifically.
Cars are bad for all sorts of reasons, and we do rationalize away tons of deaths in all sorts of situations, but overstating the problem does us no favors.
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*workplace stimulant drugs
Actually God created the demon Mammom so it's actually good
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Right people talk about how folks in the restaurant industry disporportionately smoke and just think it's a quirk of the industry and not how the working class in that line of work deals with all the bullshit that they shouldn't have to all while making horribly low wages.
At least with these deaths one can make some plausible argument in the form of "well there's a balance to be struck between safety and convenience, or safety and the desire to use intoxicants." Any sort of similar argument with covid falls flat when you look at how much better other countries have contained it.
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Yeah, the cars argument isn't good, just plausible. At least cars have some benefit, and while a major overhaul of urban transportation would be far safer, such an overhaul would have real costs.
With covid, there are about a hundred ways to imagine a response that would save way more lives and be far less costly.
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Lousy comparison.
Civil engineer here: automobile deaths are an avoidable consequence of urbanism. We do have the power to design cities and roads and cars so people do not die as a consequence of transportation, last year in Stockholm not a single driver killed anyone. Zero people died due to automobile crashes in a city of 1.6 million. The reason that tragic violence exists, like the reason covid deaths occur is because of the systemic rejection of materialism in the engineering profession.
This is genuinely fascinating -- what are they doing that we aren't?
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:surprised-pika:
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because traveling from place to place at high speed has actual utility and that's why we tolerate car crashes.
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It also makes you sound like a chud downplaying COVID.
yes. yes you can.
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There have been massive improvements in vehicle safety since (as a point of reference) Ralph Nader published "unsafe at any speed." Over the same period we've seen a lot of policies put in place to combat drunk driving specifically.
Cars are bad for all sorts of reasons, and we do rationalize away tons of deaths in all sorts of situations, but overstating the problem does us no favors.