That sound you hear? That's the whir of cranking up the old blog machine.
And what better way to orient ourselves that we're in 2014 than Ebola?
I barely have the interest or energy to write this post because it's been done so many times in the last few weeks. Flu is worse than Ebola. Obesity and heart disease are a bigger threat than Ebola. And, of course, that Facebook favorite, the number of people who have died of Ebola in the US is lower than the number of people who have been married to Kim Kardashian.
But I'm starting here because, looking through all the drafts of this blog which I tucked away over the years while residency and boards and 3 moves and life intervened, this particular post was originally titled "Swine Flu" (How quaint!).
And that's true. According to this 2012 study, reporting how the death toll from the 2009 swine flu outbreak was "10 times higher than previously thought" the toll may be as high as 201,200.
As of this writing, the Ebola death toll is closing in on 5,000.
And I say this not in the least to minimize either of those diseases. They're horrible. I don't want any of them. I don't want my loved ones to contract them. I don't want anyone to. And we absolutely need to be addressing them.
But the death toll ANNUALLY from motor vehicle violence worldwide? 1.2 million. Why no urgency? Not only that, but a rush to embrace this killer in developing countries and to defend it in our own?
When I started writing this, it was swine flu. When I finished, Ebola. As hard as it is to imagine now, in a few months or years it will be something else. But the motor vehicle deaths will keep coming, unnoticed--and worse, accepted.
The governor of New York is jumping the gun ahead of the CDC, ahead of the White House, to do something about Ebola. Where's that passion, that leadership when it comes to the road traffic violence epidemic? (with "Car-guy" Cuomo, definitely nowhere to be seen).
It's 2014. Aren't we going to do something?
