I think this chart speaks for itself.
It’s probably fair to say that we’re in the midst of a full-blown media frenzy over the (admittedly worrisome) spread of the latest Ebola virus. Yet so far this year roughly 242 times as many people have died from traffic collisions—and I haven’t yet heard anyone call for banning cars, making driving illegal, or quarantining motorists.
It’s almost as if we’re prone to focus on—and even overreact to—new and near-term problems and not very good at dealing with slower-moving “constant” threats even if they are wildly more dangerous. There’s a lesson here for our wholly inadequate response to climate change, though it’s not a case I can make with nearly as much alacrity as Jon Stewart.
Notes: Data on traffic related fatalities from the World Health Organization (WHO) here. Data on Ebola virus fatalities from WHO, CDC, and various recent media accounts such as this and this.
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