It’s slightly jarring to see a negative number, and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here.
Not everyone agrees "excess deaths" is the ultimate variable society should optimize for at the expense of all other variables.
Of course, even if it were free, it's essentially pointless because unless you live in China and they actually remain zero covid forever, you're going to repeatedly get coronavirus anyway cause it ain't ever going anywhere.
Vaccination is not even in the same league, it's an obvious easy win that gives you a far better chance when (not if) you get it.
Citation needed.
I'm not going to cite the sky being blue, tilt your neck.
I have no idea why anyone would find it uncomfortable in any way.
And yes, you might corona-ize me. But I'm more afraid that the antimasker idiot will do that than someone wearing a mask.
Your first sentence makes me think you're serious. You don't see how a sea of masked faces could be seen as dystopian? Or that it's a sign that "you're not safe," and people want to feel safe?
Not in the slightest, any more than a sea of drivers in seatbelts would feel dystopian or that I'm not safe. (Or a bunch of people in snow gear, if you want a similar aesthetic.) I don't see any dystopian vibe at all, and fail to understand why wearing an article of clothing is dystopian. Do you feel the same way about pants? I think just as many people feel safer with everyone masked up, we've just been less silent throughout the pandemic.
I would feel safer, and there would be less pressure on my healthcare service if you fall over.
If you don't, you're scaring me.
They're using it as a crude barometer for just how bad it is. We know about how many people die on average for any given period. We expect it to be in a range. When it is wildly outside of that range, then there's something going on.
Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other public health measures that aren’t as invasive. Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.
> Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.
That policy won’t take cars away from the rural populace.
Most people don’t live in rural areas and most deadly accidents don’t occur in rural areas either. Discouraging car use in cities has next to no effect on rural populations.
I’d support city only measures like a city income tax to fund public transportation and conversion of stroads to pedestrian friendly streets. But what is likely to happen are general taxations on car users such as fuel duty and onerous regulations which push up the cost of car ownership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_Stat...
We both agreed that rural areas would not be a good place to target such policies, so why assume I was saying we should push policies that are overly broad?
Current policies induce demand and make it difficult to promote transit and other modes.
If we limited and regulated car use pretty extremely and stuck with trains, bikes, and walking, we would be half the way there toward a completely sustainable society.
Cars are a major source of the least sustainable aspects of humanity on earth today.
I wasn't saying we could just suddenly ban them tomorrow.
The solution is hard because of how bad we've gotten things. But the solution has little authoritarian about it. We just change our priorities for the design of public infrastructure. We don't even need to actually ban cars at all. Make it practical and enjoyable to do everything by train, bike, or walking whenever possible and most people will happily do it. The result is a huge decrease in deaths both through healthier living and less cars.
https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos describes things pretty well and accessibly. In short: the Netherlands was on track 40 years ago to be nearly as car-dependent as the U.S. and yet protesters blocked some highway proposals and the country went in a different direction. Today, it's the best designed place in the world, and its even better for drivers too.
The authoritarian part was limiting/regulating car use pretty extremely. I'm perfectly fine with making alternatives to cars more practical, just not with making cars less practical.
Then create public transit districts, which operate like school districts. Real estate is taxed, and the proceeds go to busses.
Areas with high real estate values will have excellent public transit. Those with lower real estate values will have worse transit.
The advantage is (1) support by middle and upper class voters, who are traditionally opposed to public transit, (2) funding sustainability, (3) money is kept in local communities.
The downside is a drastic increase in inequality.
I’m obviously joking … but do you see how discouraging cars would increase inequality unless it was combine with an extremely equitable political system? A political system America doesn’t have?
America's deeply unequal political system WILL NOT ever get us better equality. It's *incidental*, a symptom of the political reality that discouraging cars would be done in a way that exacerbates inequality.
Almost any policy can be done in ways that exacerbate inequality. And a more equitable political system would be needed in order to have more equitable policies.
There's nothing specific to cars about this stuff. So, there's no point in focusing on discouraging cars as inherently part of this trend. Gentrification is a real issue. But don't blame yoga for gentrification just because yoga studios are in gentrified areas. Policies that encourage healthy tree canopy also exacerbate inequality because richer areas can hire urban foresters and so on. I mean, every single worthwhile thing you can think of exacerbates inequality if the policies are set up to make the worthwhile thing go along with already-wealthier places. None of the worthwhile things are themselves the cause of inequality.
Public transit attracts people who can’t afford cars. It also allows the “wrong element” to pass through our neighborhood.
Politically, how do you propose forcing public transit into communities that actively campaign against it?
You might as well say, “Well, if we just invented teleporters…”
It should be done where it’s practical, but in most of the US geographically it isn’t.
Of course, where Alaska does have roads, they have a super high death rate. An uncle who I never knew being one of them (though in this case, and as usual, alcohol was also involved).
But I suppose your point is more like: we've built lots of completely car-dependent situations in which people live very far from core necessities in life with no way to get them except by car. And that's clearly true. But the answer isn't teleporters or biking in -20 to got 12 miles. The answer is to stop living so far from essential resources. And that doesn't have to mean everyone moving to crazy-dense living around existing resources like grocery stores. It could just as well (better really) mean modest density in mixed areas where we have more medium-size grocery stores so that more people are close to them.
I'm not suggesting individuals just live in car DEPENDENT contexts and then forgo the thing you DEPEND on. I'm suggesting we have drastically fewer car-dependent places.
As a fact, a lot of people may feel that way, but not a large percentage. That's just a small percentage of a large number is still a large number. But tell me again why I have to subsidize your lifestyle by paying for your roads and inadequate federal gas laws recapturing the costs of pollution from your cars?
Meanwhile, most people raised like your little girl will end up moving to urban areas as an adult.
People generally don’t live where it doesn’t make at least some economic sense, and those farmers would probably stop farming if they didn’t have at least some basic necessities and amenities nearby.
But it might not really matter. Do small farms produce a noticeable amount of food in our food supply? I thought it all was giant farms with giant machinery, not family farms, that actually produced food.
(Edited to try to make it more clear that was a real question. Maybe family farms are important for the food supply?)
And they’re all stupidly wealthy for the amount of work they do, but that’s another matter.
Note: that’s all for crops. Raising animals seems to be another matter with plenty of smaller farms - and they do more work too.
The problem is the "lot of other people" issue. Your way of life works well only if most people forgo it. There's nothing inherently wrong with it in and of itself.
I still wouldn’t want to bike in it, if only because of ice.
For the record I live in Minnesota, one of the coldest and snowiest states in the US.
I'm not sure which country (NZ?) implemented a law, that everyone born after some year, will not be able to buy cigarettes anymore, so old smokers can still buy them, but kids just turning 18 can't anymore, and never will be able to.
In my country (Slovenia), cigarettes kill more people than covid did (in the last 2 years)... we had huge lockdowns, and pointed the fingers at anyone who ignored some of the rules (even though our constitutional court ruled afterwards that most of the lockdowns were unconstitutional), but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.
... Assuming people wouldn't buy on the black market, drive down to Croatia, Italy or Austria to replenish their supply, etc.
The net effect if which is that it will never be legal to sell someone born after ~2006 any tobacco products.
Early in the pandemic, I had an assignment to photograph in a particular area that was actively dissuading visitors, had signage up as such, etc. I had to stop to refuel the car, but that was the extent of my contact with people and interiors otherwise.
I live in a state that had closed borders for most of the pandemic until recently (when our adult vax rate hit 80%). They're now open and cases are predictably rising. Opening the borders seems to have had a political backlash because while families can move in/out of the state, the rising cases has brought about business lockdowns but without the support/stimulus from last year.
Auckland previously had a very strict lockdown based on very low case numbers relative to the rest of the world.
Of course there is the argument that if we didn't have such restrictions we wouldn't have dealt with COVID as well, but even taking that into account I think the government has been very conservative.
Other countries have much longer/stronger restrictions, but they have also had much more severe outbreaks.
The government seems to be very slow to come around on changing their COVID strategy, especially given that the stakes are pretty low in NZ relative to other countries.
I think the perfect time would be when effective oral anti-virals are readily available, they are just around the corner. The average daily cases are increasing and the 4th/5th wave (depending on location) is ramping up now - exactly the wrong time for a country like NZ to change international quarantine.
Others not coming in needs to change at some point, but I don’t see that it is serving us badly.
Opening up the floodgates seems unwise, but our restrictions seem quite strict given how few cases we have had.
Further, its a bit early to call victory if perpetual lockdowns are the only thing holding back the disease. What happens once they open the flood gates and covid is still active?
NZ keeps new introductions to a minimum to ensure that contact tracing is not overwhelmed and this adds to the effective decrease in reproduction offered by vaccinations. New Zealand being a season behind also allows the Northern hemisphere to burn through a wave and NZ can then decide when to lift international arrival restrictions to a time when the incidence levels are low from common arrival locales (UK, US etc).