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0 pointstolmasky4y ago0 comments

> yet there’s no constant uproar and heightened emotion around car deaths.

I think you may have a recency bias towards the mitigation techniques. The reason it seems like there's no hysteria around cars is because we've already gone through that phase and implemented the best safeguards we could come up with: the right analogy here is to see what a stickler our society is for having car insurance, which is the closest thing to a "car accident vaccine" we could come up with. Given the reality of the frequency of car accidents, and how they can potentially affect others just as much as yourself, we've implemented a system where it is a requirement to have a way to compensate the other person if an accident happens (not to mention the various laws we have around driving, the big deal that was Mothers Against Drunk Driving, breathalyzer checkpoints which could be seen quite analogously to covid testing, the fact that we need a license to drive and are tested for driving proficiency, the penalties for driving unsafely, laws requiring you to buckle your safety belt, laws around safety belts and airbags needing to be included in cars, etc. etc.). If we had an actual hypothetical "car accident vaccine," we'd probably just require you to have that instead of this tremendously complicated and expensive infrastructure around driving.

So I'd argue that what we actually don't see is heightened emotion around this onerous car infrastructure, to the point where you are essentially presenting cars as some sort of model for c'est-la-vie attitudes both from the general population and the government, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The reality is you've just gotten used to the burdens we've taken on to make our activities livable with respect to cars. Go watch the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel and you'll see just how much of your life is actually completely governed around accommodating cars (and a big part of that is in making their presence safer).

> the “hospitals filling up” narrative is mediopolitically-motivated justification, not grounded in deductive reasoning nor meant to drive effective mitigative policy.

Source?

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clairity4y ago· 2 in thread

> "The reason it seems like there's no hysteria around cars is because we've already gone through that phase and implemented the best safeguards we could come up with..."

no, we've just collectively decided that we're willing to put up with the small risk. it's nowehere near all that we could come up with. we could be much more stringent (stricter licensing & testing, tougher and more diverse training, more danger-apparent roads, better segregating roads from streets, fewer in-car and out-of-car distractions, more rigorous enforcement, higher carbon/fuel taxes, congestion pricing, stricter pollution standards, dense mixed-use neighborhoods, greater transit investment, etc.) and further reduce that risk, but we've collectively decided that the imposition and cost are not worth it (though i personally disagree). cars are a visible and imminent threat every day, in much the same way that covid is perceived to be, as a new member of the constellation of endemic infectious diseases we now live with.

as for the rest, torturing analogies that way merely to coerce them into fitting a desired explication is cruel and unusual punishment imho. i can't partake in good conscience.

tolmaskyOP4y ago

> as for the rest, torturing analogies that way merely to coerce them into fitting a desired explication is cruel and unusual punishment imho. i can't partake in good conscience.

It’s OK to just admit you chose a really bad comparison point, there are others that would probably support your case better, you just happened to choose one of the most heavily regulated areas that has had plenty of constitutional challenges (see everything around breathalyzer checkpoints and the 5th amendment), as well as one of the ones that went through the most hysteria: Ralph Nader built an entire career after publishing “Unsafe at Any Speed” and then testifying to Congress which rocked the automotive world and lead to a ton of regulations. This was all in the 60s though, so easy to forget. But for a more recent example, MADD became a huge “hysteria” to the point of the ACLU fighting against them over the constitutionality of roadblocks. Whether you think it’s justified or not (and to be clear, I’m not arguing either side in this instance), it’s undeniable that car safety was on people’s mind in a big way, and not just in one specific moment in time, but on several separate occasions, over many different issues. I mean, hell, the driver’s license is the closest thing we have to the feared “government ID,” so even the expansion of scope arguments apply.

With regard to “how much we could do” — sure, same can be said with COVID. There’s way more we could do than forcing employees of companies with over 100 people to take a free vaccine or be tested. There’s tremendously more drastic measures that could be taken. As such, the investment is at best comparable (and in reality much smaller) than what we’ve done for cars.

clairity4y ago

vehicle safety has experienced a decades-long but dilute attention (of which nader and madd are two minor blips) befitting of its risk, the kind we should apply to covid rather than the mass hysteria it currently enjoys. covid doesn't need more attention and mitigation, because none of it will reduce the long-run consequences materially (relative to both the fully-internalized costs and other comparable risks).

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