Coronavirus Causes a Bicycling Boom in New York City (grist.org) 62
An anonymous reader quotes the nonprofit environmental magazine Grist:
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... 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...
[T]he 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.
[T]he 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.
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"If you're that scared of life, "
Nobody is scared of life, just as nobody is scared of death.
Being dead is like being stupid, it's just painful for the people around you.
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"If you're that scared of life, "
Nobody is scared of life
I am.
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"Nobody is scared of life"
'I am.'
Ok, you're over sixty according to your Uid but if you don't smoke, you'll be OK, if you do, you're fucked, you won't be afraid of life much longer. :-)
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Re: Having your head crashed by a truck (Score:2)
Statistically, cycling is safer than walking in terms of deaths per mile traveled. Thus the perennial argument over cycling helmet laws potential to deter people from riding. Personally I always wear a helmet, but to prevent injury, not death.
What they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike isn't completely true. It takes some practice to ride with confidence in traffic, so it's understandable for someone who has never been on a bike since childhood to find the prospect of riding in a big city enviro
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Statistically, the people who are most at risk of self injury while walking would also be at risk of self injury while riding - but they don't ride. Those people bring the risk averages of walking way up. That doesn't mean that walking is a dangerous way for people in the workforce to commute.
Re: Having your head crashed by a truck (Score:2)
Yes the data is skewed, but not that skewed. It's not like a majority of people who can commute on foot are physically incapable of cycling.
No matter how you slice it, casual cycling is just not that dangerous. Of course you can make it dangerous, but the same caveat about skewed samples applies. People who ride no hands through red lights while texting (I've seen it) are taking significant risks
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Casual cycling is not that dangerous because you don't ride where it's dangerous. Commuting typically involves riding in unsafe places because most cities don't have adequate separation of bikes and cars.
But (Score:3)
If you're working from home, why do you even need a bicycle.
(But I can see Peleton becoming more popular
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To get groceries or visit your friends.
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To visit who??
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LOL
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Hey, after the virus is over, let's keep the restrictions in place. They seem to be having wonderful effects not just in NYC, but all over the world.
As a toilet paper manufacturer, I approve this sentiment.
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Yes, authoritarian government control, shortages of staple items, termination of individual liberty, culling of the weak, impending apocalyptic doom to keep everyone in line. Indeed, it sounds like a leftist dream world. But everyone gets a lot of exercise and pollution is down, a few thousand or tens of thousands dead are a small price to pay, right?
You guys have left far beyond parody at this point, you. One thing this incident has proven, and was a surprise to even me - you love totalitar
Re: Just an idea (Score:2)
Do you know what separates us from you? Laughter.
You're a miserable git, in case it needs spelling out.
Re: Just an idea (Score:2)
I guess laughing is a good way to pass the time while you're standing in bread lines.
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Public transport is not safe (Score:5, Informative)
A chart to show the relentless spread of covid-19 over the last couple of weeks in a bunch of countries.
https://snipboard.io/IOzDFm.jp... [snipboard.io]
Being Logarithmic it shows how it's been increasing is spread at almost the same rate in the countries selected. Data from: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
People should know that this virus is airborne, it can stick around in air for as long as 3 hours, link: https://thehill.com/policy/hea... [thehill.com]
Another study found that a passenger got on a bus 30 minutes after infected passengers got off and still caught the virus:
https://mustsharenews.com/covi... [mustsharenews.com]
Many people don't know how essential vitamin D is to the immune system:
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/... [pharmacytimes.com]
This virus infects most people before the symptoms occur in the infectors so waiting for symptoms to occur is not a good strategy:
https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]
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See this study too:
https://mustsharenews.com/covi... [mustsharenews.com]
Passenger 1 infected gets on bus, gets off bus. bus surfaces cleaned.
Half hour later, passenger 2 gets on, catches the infection - 4.5m away form where the infected passenger was, didn't go to the same part of the bus, the air carried the infection and it stayed in the air for 30 mins.
This virus spreads 10-fold every 8 days, it'll infect the whole worlds population within weeks if we don't take drastic measures soon, those measures are quarantine / social
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The other paper on the subject which came to the same conclusion via lab tests is awaiting peer review.
https://thehill.com/policy/hea... [thehill.com]
The simple fact is this virus is obviously extremely contagious.
Here in the UK we're not very huggy kissy and the virus is spreading just as fast as countries like France or Italy, I think that is due to it's highly airborne nature.
At the end of the day I think the only way to stop the spread of the virus is by stopping the social interactions IE quarantine. Although S' Kor
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Looking at the 2020-03-09 pdf. They did do testing, see method on lines 67 onwards and results from 96 onwards. There's a lot of scientific jargon there, I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the science here but they did do aerosol testing and said the aerosols were 'viable' at 3 hours.
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]
Whilst I haven't heard of anyone contracting COVID-19 from public transport other than that one bus, I also haven't gotten info on how the other 145000 people contracted the disease so t
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The bus case is quite interesting. But the article you linked to does not claim that the bus was cleaned and also does not explain how transmission via fomites was ruled out. The map of the bus suggests that the covid carrier could have contaminated the metal rods near the door in the middle. Only passengers leaving through that door got infected.
The amount of air ventilation in public transport would flush out most airborne virus particles in much less time than half an hour I can't find numbers for buses
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The 2 different passengers did not use the same part of the bus, there was 4.5m between where they were.
The is also the paper awaiting peer review, I'm no expert but it looks like they were thorough, they say the virus can stay alive airborne for up to 3 hours and for 3 days on some surfaces.
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It's highly possible that all passengers all used the same exit in the back and that the infected ones touched the handrail near that exit.
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They didn't, cameras were checked. The 2 passengers did not use the same part of the bus.
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Look here [pedestrian...ations.com] for an expert view on coronavirus and public transit. In short: Asian countries, which are the countries dealing most effectively with coronavirus, do not thing public transit is more of a risk than other public facilities such as offices.
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That's like a blog and he's quoting old info by Maria Ma which is basically wrong, She hypothesises too much and is misleading about one thing - most infections occur before the person infecting is symptomatic. She hints otherwise.
https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]
"In the Singapore cluster, between 45% and 84% of infections appeared to come from people incubating the virus. In China, the figures ranged from 65% to as much as 87%."
I wouldn't want to get on public transport in the UK where testing has been ina
They're still taking risks. (Score:2)
[The city's DoT says it's seen a 50 percent increase in bike traffic on bridges compared to last March. Citi Bike [bike sharing] says rides are up 67% vs. last year]
They're still taking a big chance.
Yes, biking is better than being in a can, elbow-to-elbow, with other commuters. But biking is no protection if you happen to inhale a floating droplet from where some other biker or hiker sneezed within the last two hours. And ride-sharing using a bike that's been used in the last several days by a victim m
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Until people start to isolate the virus pretty much spreads everywhere at the same rate. https://snipboard.io/IOzDFm.jp... [snipboard.io]
The math is simple, you more people you interact with the higher your chance of catching the disease. The more people you interact with the more people that will catch the disease from you. The only way to avoid spreading or catching COVID-19 is to isolate.
Covid took 8 days to go from 100 cases in the US to 1000 cases in the US, that is a shocking rate of spread, but it's no different fr
Re:They're still taking risks. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Brexit has given us a strange blessing, tourists stayed away due to VISA and travel uncertainties, I'm pretty sure if it wasn't for the whole brexit debacle then more people would have visited the UK and we'd be where Italy is now.
I seriously hope the gov't uses the time we've been given to enact proper measures to slow the virus.
I mentioned to a senior nurse that I thought the NHS would be in real trouble in two weeks, she said it's in trouble now :-(
China enacted quarantine when only 571 people where know
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Re: They're still taking risks. (Score:2)
Yes a recent paper reported finding detectable airborne virus for some time, but that's far from showing significant transmission risk. I think being worried about breathing in other cyclists' exhalation borders on hysteria. Note sitting on a bike isn't magical, the risk factor is breathing, which you have to do anyway and whose risk, even if finite, is small, otherwise we'd be seeing measles levels of transmission.
There is a significant chance you are going to get this thing by hand to face transmission so
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Clear breathing is a very big risk.
I should stop right now it I was you!
Other papers showed transmission. (Score:2)
Yes a recent paper reported finding detectable airborne virus for some time, but that's far from showing significant transmission risk.
And two other recent papers showed:
- A transmission in a bus from several seats away with no contact.
- A transmission in a bus from a passenger who'd gotten off to one that got on half an hour later.
Not that it matters. Given the documented infectivity of the virus if it gets into the eye, nose, or lungs, the discovery that sneeze particles with live virus f
Where'd you get the idea the risk was small? (Score:2)
the risk factor is breathing, which you have to do anyway and whose risk, even if finite, is small,
Where'd you get the idea the risk of airborne transmission was small? The last I saw they were thinking it's the major mode of transmission, and probably why it escaped the quarantine efforts.
At first the advice was wash-wash-wash, because many similar viruses were transmitted mainly by large droplets (which rapidly fall from the air) and contact. But then they discovered this one is transmitted by airborne
Re: Where'd you get the idea the risk was small? (Score:2)
I have yet to see any expert advice to the effect that airborne transmission is a major risk. Note that "airborne" specifically means by suspended aerosol droplets. Someone can cough on you from two meters away and that's not "airborne".
The distinction is relevant to the scenario we're talking about here.
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I'd take those counts with a grain of salt. Even under the best circumstances when testing thousands per day like in Korea or Italy you'll never have an actual count of infected in the population. It's more a reflection of how many and which people are tested.
Still, public transport has to be like the best possible place to get infected, what with hundreds of people stuck together in an enclosed space, breathing onto each other and touching the handrails with corona-infested hands. But no government in a pl
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is a recipe for turning NYC into a pesthole.
In other words, no change.
Good luck not getting ran over by vehicles (Score:1)
More accidents, not less (Score:2)
Car drivers are subjected to a degree of testing (at least where I live), Cyclists have he right to be bat-shit crazy, and most of them seem keen to exercise this right in front of fast moving mechanical contrivances.
At the present odds, people in the under 50's age group are more likely to die from "mad cyclist disease" than from Corona virus.
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People who wouldn't normally get on a bike but used the Corona virus as an excuse to get their butt off the couch probably aren't in the spandex daredevil league. It's the racer wannabes who are using their commute as lap times that do most the crazy maneuvers I see to shave a few seconds off their time and they're already out there.
This will work (Score:1, Interesting)
until it rains.
Nice (Score:2)
It's nice to read articles like this one. The virus also does positive things. Let's hope many of the people who took to riding the bike because of it keep using the bike after the crisis is over. It's good for them and for the environment.
If you're healthy enough to ride to work... (Score:2)
If you're healthy enough to ride to work you don't have to worry about coronavirus. It's not going to be a big deal for you.
If we were the America of old, we'd be taking advantage of the one way we have to grant immunity to create an army of critical personnel who are immune and can work without fear of catching or spreading it. Open exposure camps for healthy young volunteers in critical professions. Pay extra to go to them, and guarantee them extra pay in the near future as they serve in their professions
I have been cycling in the rain lately (Score:2)
Working on that routine as a slashdotter (Score:2)
I'm watching all these folks cycling or rushing to work. I head for the fridge and do my 3 sets, y'know, refrigerator door pull, get the tacos, refrigerator door pull, get the salsa, then 1 more pull, start working on that 6 pack. Not the corona but the Corona Light
The wrist curls, you've seen the Chris Pratt videos on YT.
Reach for the remote. Lift that couch. Got a little sweat going. You know the rest.
Morons (Score:2)
Respirate and sweat more, continue to commute, take longer to do so, and clog up traffic even worse than normal.
That's what we need.
Typical NYC asshole behavior.