You're right, some of the categories sound more cutesy than clear. I interpreted "Walking down the street" as "Pedestrian killed by motor vehicle crash", but I'd rather have a chart that spelled it out.
You assume basic skills that many of us lack. Gien plastic sheeting and duct tape I seriously doubt I could do much excpt stick the stuff to my skin and painfully rip it off. I would not be a good pinoeer.
I agree that we worry to much about that sort of thing, all in all sudden violen terriost act is not that different fo a way to die then sudden violent car wreck.
You bring up an important point (though I bet you could cut out a stylish poncho if you wanted one). We should lobby Tom Ridge to fund supplies and curriculum to teach schoolchildren essential plastic sheeting and duct tape skills. On the one hand, it's got to be more useful than 1950's era duck and cover practice. On the other hand, I can imagine suffocated plastic mummy horror stories starring ten-year-old sociopaths, so maybe not.
Even if you catch them at 10, can you fix them? I've been dismayed at the recent bunch of school shooting stories. I'm not sure if the solution is parenting licenses or mandatory psych tests. Something involving an empty room, a hamster*, and a knife perhaps.
*Gratuitous, I know, but I think we already covered the math and perversity angles.
I agree the terrorism threat level charts are silly, but so is that parody. Whoever said it's the number of people who die from something that makes it scary
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I think you make a good point with the shark death comparison. Equally unexpected and scary, comparable small current death totals, but the sharks aren't likely to get nukes or other WMD anytime soon, and so are much less of a worry. Note that completely avoiding possible shark habitats is much easier than completely avoiding the possibility of falling down a stairway.
Should we base government funding on which threats are the most scary? I would prefer that CDC bureaucrats, and maybe even elected officials, have more sense, and base amount of funding on the number of (admittedly imperfectly predicted) deaths which would be prevented
of course not. who said government funding decisions made sense? Priority for funding is decided in the Legislature, though, not at CDC admin/bureaucrat level. which means it's influenced by the public and what the public is most afraid of, and by politics.
Local health departments would LOVE to have as much money for prevention as they do for "preparedness." Just as doctors who work on prevention would love to have half the money that goes into research on extremely expensive equipment that saves a couple lives a year. And the soldiers in the Army would probably much prefer armor for everyone than extremely expensive weaponry or planes that are hardly used or used once.
I tend to disagree on two points- c) Terriost acts, assuming rational terriosts could probably be avioded by moving to low density, low target areas. I am thinking the dakotas or the like. Not attractive, but probably easier then avoiding "driving off the road" by not driving.
b) Speed is a feature of many of the potental deaths on the chart, murder, lighting strike even accidental drowning are not things that we think we can fight off.
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I sincerely doubt that's what killed all those people. I even doubt that it was all people who were crashed into by cars or something.
SOMETHING killed them. Maybe heart disease or maybe terrorists. Maybe a blast from Peter Pettigrew. I don't like their chart.
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I agree that we worry to much about that sort of thing, all in all sudden violen terriost act is not that different fo a way to die then sudden violent car wreck.
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*Gratuitous, I know, but I think we already covered the math and perversity angles.
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Should we base government funding on which threats are the most scary? I would prefer that CDC bureaucrats, and maybe even elected officials, have more sense, and base amount of funding on the number of (admittedly imperfectly predicted) deaths which would be prevented
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Priority for funding is decided in the Legislature, though, not at CDC admin/bureaucrat level. which means it's influenced by the public and what the public is most afraid of, and by politics.
Local health departments would LOVE to have as much money for prevention as they do for "preparedness." Just as doctors who work on prevention would love to have half the money that goes into research on extremely expensive equipment that saves a couple lives a year. And the soldiers in the Army would probably much prefer armor for everyone than extremely expensive weaponry or planes that are hardly used or used once.
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c) Terriost acts, assuming rational terriosts could probably be avioded by moving to low density, low target areas. I am thinking the dakotas or the like. Not attractive, but probably easier then avoiding "driving off the road" by not driving.
b) Speed is a feature of many of the potental deaths on the chart, murder, lighting strike even accidental drowning are not things that we think we can fight off.
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