Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 30 Random Spanish Flu Free Riders Into Your Car

13 Replies to “Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 30 Random Spanish Flu Free Riders Into Your Car”

1. Here’s an interesting article on a pandemic that took place in 1968…..killed 100,000 Americans (170,000 today with U.S. population increase) and over 1 million worldwide (over 2 million today with world population increase). Talk about an overreaction.

   https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

   1. And less than 10 years earlier there was a similar outbreak.

      Remembering the 1957 Asian flu pandemic

      It’s not that Asian flu—the second influenza pandemic of the twentieth century—wasn’t a serious disease. Worldwide, this flu strain killed somewhere between 1 and 2 million people. More than 100,000 died in the U.S. alone. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, governors did not call out the National Guard, and political panic-mongers did not blame it all on President Eisenhower. College sports events were not cancelled, planes and trains continued to run, and Americans did not regard one another with fear and suspicion, touching elbows instead of hands. We took the Asian flu in stride. We said our prayers and took our chances.

      I remember 1957 quite well, but I must have thought I was bulletproof since I have no recollection about trying to avoid this occurrence.

2. Jeez, I guess this would be the first time in 50 years. The only time a car is clean is when a new one is put in service.

3. When Giuliani was mayor he had a policy that any subway car that came in to the terminal with graffiti didn’t go out again until the graffiti was cleaned off (part of the “Broken Windows” policy).

   Not unprecedented, not impractical. Just long, long overdue.

   1. I was working in Germany 18 years ago and my technical liaison was a graduate of Toronto University. His first job after graduating as an engineer (not a train driver!) was on the Long Island Railroad when Rudy Giuliani became Mayor of New York. The Metro trains were renowned for being covered in graffiti, so Giuliani put up fences around the marshalling yards, had armed guards patrolling and basically said ‘we will shoot anyone who shouldn’t be there’.
      After the sixth trespasser was shot the graffiti stopped.

4. When I was in Montreal in mid-March, the local news reported the standard for cleaning the municipal buses was once every 43 days. I believe the Metro was once per week.

5. I saw a cockroach climb out onto the window from the heater vent duct on a TTC bus back in 79-80 winter. Verry interestink.

6. Hazard pay for sure.

7. Cool! So now the Homeless get FREE maid service … how pro-gress-ive

8. If I ever go to New York I’m renting a damn car. I don’t care what parking costs or how long it takes to find it.

9. Greyhound is suspending all operations in Canada effective May 12. Ridership has fallen 95 percent.

   https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-greyhound-canada-announces-temporary-shutdown-of-remaining-routes/

10. This just in.

    Calgary Transit to lay off hundreds as COVID-19 pandemic leads to drop in ridership

11. What’s incredible is that they just started doing this, but 80 NYC transit workers have already died of coronavirus.

    https://nypost.com/2020/04/22/mta-coronavirus-death-toll-hits-82-chief-blames-health-officials/

    Which is BTW an important point. Do 80 MTA workers die of flu every March and April? It doesn’t seem likely.