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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

For the recent cyclospora outbreak, a relatively tiny number of people were affected. Per the CDC[1]: 17,180 cases; 922 Hospitalizations; 2 deaths.

Not to diminish this for anyone affected, but the safety of driving cars is far worse than that and most of us do that daily.

I never stopped buying or eating lettuce.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cyclosporiasis/cases/index.html

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I was one of those affected. The official CDC numbers are underestimates, because they're only counting cases confirmed by culture. My doc asked enough questions to make sure it wasn't your typical stomach flu or food poisoning and got me the antibiotics ASAP which I appreciated. I assume I'm not counted as a result. I have to assume others aren't as well.

Furthermore the present CDC was gutted by an administration whose solution to Covid was to stop counting

And whose solution to "Is cyclospora a problem?" was to remove the monitoring and presumably stick their fingers in their ears.[0]

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-cdc-food-net-monitorin...

The FoodNet thing, while bad, has a bit of nuance in the system was not meant to do outbreak detection, so likely wouldn't have helped here.

But it does cripple our ability to ask if this was a one-off, or if we're seeing long term trends that should be worrisome.

It would have made identifying the source trivial. Instead we had waves of confused and confusing reports.

This. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, the number of people who will work their way into laboratory confirmed case reports is a small fraction of the total number of people impacted.

You are almost certainly not reflected in those numbers.

Comparing it to car safety does put it in perspective, but at the same time the safety of cars has nothing to do with food safety. Considering the necessity of food for life, and the fact our current population size is dependent on industrialized farming, I think it's worth to scrutinize food safety and hold it to a high standard.

The US is uniquely dependent on cars for survival, it’s probably not appropriate to presume that cars are less necessary. Anyways, if you live in the middle of nowhere you can grow your own food. If you live deep in the city, the chances of getting sick from McD’s or whatever is pretty low.

We do hold food safety to a high standard. We have some of the highest standards on the planet.

I'm sorry, it is not appropriate to presume that cars are less necessary than food? Hmm, what about water, is that one more important or are cars still top of mind for you?

I think the point being made wasn't literally that cars are more important than food, but more that for most Americans, you can't really get by without store-bought food and a car. This is just fact.

A few lucky people live in the densest urban areas where car non-ownership is totally fine, nice even. For the rest, it's horrible and no one would choose it. A trip to the grocery store in the suburbs could take 30-45 minutes each way in 90º heat (and in half the country, with humidity too) is terrible - and think how many times you'll have to go to the store if you're buying only what you can carry 3 miles. Also many school districts provide no buses, so now you're walking kids to and from school in all weather. Bikes are a thing, but the roads aren't always safe and it still sucks in weather.

For most Americans, you can't really get by without store-bought food and a car. This is just fact.

For all animals on earth, you can't really get by without food. This is jus a fact.

Wait until you hear about how much harder it is to grow a car than to grow a tomato.

True, but even the most car-centric socities could adapt to a shortage of cars by means less drastic than a culling of the population through widespread famine and death.

My electric scooter works just fine for getting around a city. You can carry a bag or two of groceries home with just a simple backpack. Visit the store frequently enough and you don't actually need a car. In my area you don't even need a license to ride the scooter on public roads.

I have a car (and a license) anyway for comfort reasons, but I keep the scooter in the back for situations like distant parking. Works pretty well for me.

This is basically the point I was making, yes.

I'm shocked to hear many school districts provide no busses though... I guess I always assumed that was some legal requirement? Like you have to send your kid to school, so we have to provide transportation if you're outside of a certain range.

Nope! I was shocked too, I grew up in a poor area that is borderline rural. Wealthy areas simply assume everyone have a car. The district only owns a small fleet of short buses, which are only offered if they assign your kids to a special-ed program at a school other than their assigned school.

Example: The assigned school for my neighborhood is 1.5 miles away by the shortest possible route, and requires crossing a 7-lane arterial.

Buddy, just take like 3 seconds to compare how hard they are to acquire. When did everyone on this site get so stupid?

We weren't talking about how hard things are to acquire, we were talking about how necessary things are. Your comment is a digression, and as such it serves as a hollow, ineffective insult.

We have made ourselves dependent on cars because we have cars. There is no natural reason we must be so dependent on cars. It is a choice.

Our dependency on food is not a choice.

Cool, that has zero effect on how easy it is to overcome the problems.

My entire family was affected. We didn’t report it but the impact was felt.

We also stopped buying lettuce.

i have health insurance, i know i got it, and i rode it out without going to the doctor (not saying that was the right choice, it's just what i did).

i guarantee you that first number is wildly non-illustrative of the reach of this outbreak.

I'm guessing conservatively at least 10x that were sickened given how few people actually go to the doctor when they're sick.

> but the safety of driving cars is far worse than that and most of us do that daily.

this "whattabout"ism is brought up during every safety discussion. can we please accept that 1/ everyone knows about the car issue, and 2/ the car issue being a problem does not mean we should stop talking about other issues that exist.

I'm not convinced about 1. There are a lot of things we could be doing about a 9/11's worth of dead people every single month that we just don't.

In any case, it's a good barometer for judging personal risk. I don't stress about the danger when I get into my car, so I probably shouldn't stress about the danger from something substantially less likely to take me out. It contextualizes a number by comparing it to something most of us do every day.

I think a lot of people sort of instinctively avoid thinking about or engaging with the dangers posed by cars, at least in part because it creates a sense of dissonance that there’s a non-zero risk of life changing harm to you or your family from such a “normal” activity. For many people today, there is no alternative but to accept the risk if you want to do anything outside your home, other than dramatically upending your life to move somewhere else. Thinking too much about risks that feel outside your control just creates a state of anxiety.

No one is saying we shouldn’t work to improve the safety of multiple systems at a time. But it is helpful to keep perspective over relative safety.

People are very prone to overweight the risk of things that are prominent in the media.

17K confirmed cases means some multiplier unconfirmed. That is not "tiny", especially given the geographic area it covers. It's a massive failure of our food safety and yet another sign the institutions that have been systematically hobbled that keep the food we eat safe and the air and water clean are finally breaking under the deliberate neglect and abuse that's been heaped on them.

Honestly I did not know the numbers at all, so thank you, but those are higher than what I would have guessed.

The economic utility of car transportation is also far higher than that of lettuce.

The economic utility if vegetables is far higher than that of a Toyota Camry Plenty if people in America live just fine without any car. Nobody survives without any food.

"not to diminish" as you wave away 2 people that have died and make a false equivalency to traffic accidents.

This is not a data exercise, this is real life and 1 person getting sick from this stuff is too much.

> This is not a data exercise, this is real life [...]

You may not wish to hear this, but real life is very much a data exercise:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

ONE person getting SICK is too much??? We’ve never been within a million miles of this random bar you’ve set. No country has. It’s absolutely insane to try and hold the position that our food must be so perfectly clean that it cannot ever get anyone sick. That would almost certainly be impossible. If you can’t even engage with reality, nobody will take these massive statements seriously.

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