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The lockdown of non-essential businesses has essentially reduced traffic accidents here to zero when usually there'd be a over a hundred deaths and few thousand

The lockdown of non-essential businesses has essentially reduced traffic accidents here to zero when usually there'd be a over a hundred deaths and few thousand injuries per week. By comparison there's only been 20 deaths from covid-19 over the space of 3 months, nearly all of them elderly people with pre-existing conditions. Yet people are emotional creatures and not all deaths are equal.

__s 7y ago
Traffic accidents also aren't contagious
- tejtm 7y ago
  Allot of people do get them from someone else, but your point still holds as they tend to fall off not grow beyond first contacts.
Analemma_ 7y ago
As of right now, covid-19 is killing about 2,200 people/day, compared to about 3,300 people/day for car accidents. So it hasn't caught up yet, but it's still on an exponential climb and will probably get there in another week or so, and then keep right on climbing. This whole "the flu/cars/heart disease is way worse" shtick people are leaning on has got to stop. It's true until exponential growth suddenly means it's not. EDIT: And those are the worldwide numbers. In the US specifically, covid-19 is killing about 200 people/day, compared to 100 people/day for car accidents, and is of course going to go way up from here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Wouldn’t the number of people the virus will kill will reach a maximum and then decline rapidly as the remaining population will be immune to it?
  - acqq 7y ago
    Yes, but not so soon: at the moment in most of the places it grows exponentially, the numbers doubling every three to four days. So "and will probably get there in another week or so" is probably too slow. If it's really 2000 deaths per day now, I can safely estimate 4000 deaths per day in just three to four days. Then in next 4 days it will be 8000. Save this estimate and compare. In order for the effect you describe to happen (the maximum to be reached) the most popular estimate is that the number of infected has to reach around 70% of the population. Until that point the doubling of deaths every few days, without the measures to prevent that, would continue, deaths happening in always bigger amounts, but concentrated in the few weeks.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    Not all diseases cause reliable immunity.
  - macintux 7y ago
    The maximum, absent strong measures, will be immense due to the fact that some significant percentage of patients require intensive care/ventilation for weeks. Imagine 5% of the world’s population requiring hospitalization all at roughly the same time. We don’t have 350,000,000 ventilators and hospital beds and health care professionals to take care of them, so the death toll and general suffering would be unimaginable.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Yes, but this statement is trivially true for any exponential spread constrained by a maximum population - even if the virus kills everybody.
- jsight 7y ago
  I still think the comparison is useful. Cars and their (horrible) rate of serious injury and death seem to be the worst thing that people readily accept. Showing that covid-19 can be worse than that can be enlightening. And it obviously becomes exponentially worse if the hospital system overloads.
scrollaway 7y ago
The "car accidents" fallacy. 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day. Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Once covid-19/sars-cov-2 is over would you support the same levels of lockdown for car accidents and flu/viral pneumonia? Many more lives could be saved with the same political will and public support you find on this issue. These lockdowns can clearly prevent the spread of existing diseases and save magnitudes more lives as presented by the article along with the inevitable traffic statistics to come out showing the effects. I'm wondering how someone here supporting lockdowns can justify not repeating it once this pandemic is over? Is ten young healthy lives taken by cars not worth one old ill one taken by a disease?
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    I wouldn't justify a lockdown for cars because there are other ways to beat cars than locking everyone in their homes. Point: I don't have a car, yet I'm locked in my home right now. Hmmmmm. And yes, I would support forbidding cars altogether for most things they're used for today that can be done with different vehicles.
    - frank2 7y ago
      Would you support forbidding cars in neighborhoods designed around the car, e.g., most American suburbs planned after 1950, or would you limit the ban to neighborhoods planned after the start of the ban?
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        Is my opinion on the exact details of the implementation of a non-existant car ban really that relevant?
lazyasciiart 7y ago
"How many people died of this" is only the tiniest factor to consider when trying to evaluate how dangerous a problem is. Consider the death of half a dozen unrelated people in city A, and the deaths of half a dozen separately unrelated people in city B. Who cares, right? That many people die every three seconds or something. Now add the information that the 6 people in city A died of smallpox. The 6 people in city B were all pedestrians hit by cars. Should both cities react the same way?
macintux 7y ago
13 people died just yesterday in one hospital in NYC. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-... You want a lockdown before your city turns into a medical disaster zone. Celebrate the fact that it's being done early.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

__s 7y ago

Traffic accidents also aren't contagious

tejtm 7y ago
Allot of people do get them from someone else, but your point still holds as they tend to fall off not grow beyond first contacts.

Analemma_ 7y ago

As of right now, covid-19 is killing about 2,200 people/day, compared to about 3,300 people/day for car accidents. So it hasn't caught up yet, but it's still on an exponential climb and will probably get there in another week or so, and then keep right on climbing. This whole "the flu/cars/heart disease is way worse" shtick people are leaning on has got to stop. It's true until exponential growth suddenly means it's not. EDIT: And those are the worldwide numbers. In the US specifically, covid-19 is killing about 200 people/day, compared to 100 people/day for car accidents, and is of course going to go way up from here.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Wouldn’t the number of people the virus will kill will reach a maximum and then decline rapidly as the remaining population will be immune to it?
- acqq 7y ago
  Yes, but not so soon: at the moment in most of the places it grows exponentially, the numbers doubling every three to four days. So "and will probably get there in another week or so" is probably too slow. If it's really 2000 deaths per day now, I can safely estimate 4000 deaths per day in just three to four days. Then in next 4 days it will be 8000. Save this estimate and compare. In order for the effect you describe to happen (the maximum to be reached) the most popular estimate is that the number of infected has to reach around 70% of the population. Until that point the doubling of deaths every few days, without the measures to prevent that, would continue, deaths happening in always bigger amounts, but concentrated in the few weeks.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  Not all diseases cause reliable immunity.
- macintux 7y ago
  The maximum, absent strong measures, will be immense due to the fact that some significant percentage of patients require intensive care/ventilation for weeks. Imagine 5% of the world’s population requiring hospitalization all at roughly the same time. We don’t have 350,000,000 ventilators and hospital beds and health care professionals to take care of them, so the death toll and general suffering would be unimaginable.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Yes, but this statement is trivially true for any exponential spread constrained by a maximum population - even if the virus kills everybody.
jsight 7y ago
I still think the comparison is useful. Cars and their (horrible) rate of serious injury and death seem to be the worst thing that people readily accept. Showing that covid-19 can be worse than that can be enlightening. And it obviously becomes exponentially worse if the hospital system overloads.

scrollaway 7y ago

The "car accidents" fallacy. 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day. Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.

ShorsHammer 7y ago
Once covid-19/sars-cov-2 is over would you support the same levels of lockdown for car accidents and flu/viral pneumonia? Many more lives could be saved with the same political will and public support you find on this issue. These lockdowns can clearly prevent the spread of existing diseases and save magnitudes more lives as presented by the article along with the inevitable traffic statistics to come out showing the effects. I'm wondering how someone here supporting lockdowns can justify not repeating it once this pandemic is over? Is ten young healthy lives taken by cars not worth one old ill one taken by a disease?
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I wouldn't justify a lockdown for cars because there are other ways to beat cars than locking everyone in their homes. Point: I don't have a car, yet I'm locked in my home right now. Hmmmmm. And yes, I would support forbidding cars altogether for most things they're used for today that can be done with different vehicles.
  - frank2 7y ago
    Would you support forbidding cars in neighborhoods designed around the car, e.g., most American suburbs planned after 1950, or would you limit the ban to neighborhoods planned after the start of the ban?
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      Is my opinion on the exact details of the implementation of a non-existant car ban really that relevant?

lazyasciiart 7y ago

"How many people died of this" is only the tiniest factor to consider when trying to evaluate how dangerous a problem is. Consider the death of half a dozen unrelated people in city A, and the deaths of half a dozen separately unrelated people in city B. Who cares, right? That many people die every three seconds or something. Now add the information that the 6 people in city A died of smallpox. The 6 people in city B were all pedestrians hit by cars. Should both cities react the same way?

macintux 7y ago

13 people died just yesterday in one hospital in NYC. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-... You want a lockdown before your city turns into a medical disaster zone. Celebrate the fact that it's being done early.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]