Comment by SoftTalker
11 hours ago
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.
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.
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.
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...
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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?
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> 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.
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.
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.
The economic utility of car transportation is also far higher than that of lettuce.
My entire family was affected. We didn’t report it but the impact was felt.
We also stopped buying lettuce.
Honestly I did not know the numbers at all, so thank you, but those are higher than what I would have guessed.
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.
"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.