[extropy-chat] RISKS: hazard comparisons

[Robert J. Bradbury]

The NY Times Book Review has a good article on a couple of
good sources with respect to the risks we face with regard
to infectious diseases.  Presumably everyone with an extropic
perspective should always be balancing their external risks
(ranging from infectious diseases to asteroids).

'The Great Influenza' and 'Microbial Threats to Health': Virus Alert
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/books/review/14GEWENT.html?pagewanted=print

If you (personally) do not have a "Plan B" with regard to such
scenarios you are standing at the craps tables in Las Vegas
rolling the dice.

(As a side note, though I do not have the reference handy there seems
to have been a panel recommendation as to how to deal with asteroids
in the U.K. recently that the government has chosen to ignore.)

And worth noting, at least in the U.S., are recent editorials
that automobile accidents kill ~120 people per day followed
by the flu (Source: NY Times editorial 3/13/04 by N. Kristof [1]).
Of course ~50 people per year killed prematurely due terrorism
(based on U.S. Japanese/Al Queda attack rates over the last
century) are hard to compare with hundreds of people per day due
to a failure to enact good safety standards for transportation
methods and produce solutions for influenza.   (For example I've
never seen a comparison of research-funding per death from
automobile accidents, cancer, heart disease and influenza.)

Robert

1. 117 Deaths Each Day, Nicholas D. Kristof, 13 Mar 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/opinion/13KRIS.html