Posted on 03/15/2020 12:29:01 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
If there’s a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic — and let’s be real: we could all really use a win right now — it’s that there’s probably never been a better time to ride a bike in the Big Apple.
On Sunday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a new set of guidelines for citizens hoping to help contain the burgeoning outbreak. They included working from home, if possible, avoiding subways during rush hour (a breeding ground for respiratory viruses), and walking or biking to work if possible to avoid crowding on public transportation.
At first, it was uncertain whether New Yorkers who aren’t used to cycling on the city’s inconsistent network of bike lanes —which are frequently clogged by parked or idling cars and trucks — would take the mayor’s advice. De Blasio himself admitted he felt like he would need to brush up on his cycling skills before trying to navigate the city on two wheels, prompting some cycling advocates to ask why the mayor isn’t trying more urgently to build bike lanes that are smooth and protected enough to accommodate even inexperienced cyclists.
Now, less than a week later, it’s clear that inexperience and physical impediments weren’t enough to keep New Yorkers from adopting a more hygienic, climate-friendly, people-powered form of transportation. The city’s Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it’s seen a 50 percent increase in bike traffic on bridges connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens compared to last March. New York City’s bike share program, Citi Bike, has also seen an enormous upswing in demand. Citi Bike announced on Thursday that rides are up 67 percent compared to a year ago.
While it’s clear that coronavirus precautions are driving a huge part of the uptick in cycling, some of New York’s current biking boom can probably be attributed to unseasonably warm weather this year. (We also can’t discount the possibility that some of these new cyclists are just looking for a way to work out their coronavirus anxieties without having to go to the gym.)
Though you might expect an influx of (presumably) inexperienced riders to make the city’s streets less safe, the opposite is more likely to be true due to the well-established safety-in-numbers effect: The more cyclists there are on the road, the safer they’ll be, because motorists are forced to become more attentive. And right now, there are a lot fewer motorists on New York City streets; the coronavirus pandemic has also caused a 15 percent drop in rush-hour traffic this week compared to the same time last year. That means less pollution for cyclists to choke on and fewer chances of dangerous collisions.
There’s no telling whether New York’s cycling boom will outlast this coronavirus outbreak, but for now, the combination of more bikes and fewer cars is creating safer, greener streets in the country’s biggest city.
And that’s something to smile about — even if it’s behind a face mask.
The best that I can tell from reading about situations in places with large outbreaks is this. An outbreak will happen in a community with a hospital. The cases with severe symptoms and bodies pile up there.
It scares the people who see it firsthand. Can’t stop them from telling others. Other people in that community and people in surrounding communities button up and try to avoid catching it.
A few other communities are affected more or less the same way. After a certain threshold is reached (varies from individual to individual in authority), a national government tries to shut down the spread. Increasing restrictions follow. That wasn’t done with any of the many flu strains.
Hope that helps.
If you were one of the tens of thousands of recent Chinese immigrants who live in our community would you contact medical authorities and complain about your current symptoms if you were not already extremely ill? I know many people who have suffered from symptoms which may have indicated that they have had the Coronavirus. How many of them do you think have had any intention of drawing attention to themselves or their families by getting tested? This is especially true now that authorities have surrounded houses with armed guards in other parts of the country when residents refused to be imprisoned in a designated quarantine facility.
The virus may have already peaked in this area with only vulnerable old or sick people dying from it. The same demographic that succumbed to H1N1 and the flu season of 2017-18 with no one in the press paying any attention. The current “crisis” is as much the result of political nonsense as a threat to the public.
I can hardly imagine advice which is more of a waste of time and energy. As increased testing illuminates how far and how long this virus has been circulating in places like where we live... the media will have a heyday hyping the numbers.
But in the end the most likely conclusion a year from now will be that this variant of the flu was no worse than many others that have come and gone, and most likely will have caused far fewer deaths. Illnesses that are very deadly tend to burn themselves out in short order. Illnesses that are highly contagious but not so deadly infect a larger number of people. Sometimes there are illnesses that have a combination of lethality that cause a greater number of deaths. But we typically do not know in the first few months whether the current variant is more devastating than previous variants.
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