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Unless bad driving is an infectious airborne pathogen, I'm not following this analogy.


Come on - obviously bad driving is not primarily an infectious airborne pathogen. Bad driving is something you can unilaterally inflict on other people to permanently ruin their lives, as is an infectious airborne pathogen.


Indeed, driving lorries and buses requires an advanced license, with far more stringent testing, presumably because, like in the analogy, you could kill a lot more people behind the wheel of those?


Well I certainly do think people should consider others when they get behind the wheel.

Similarly I think people should consider the risk to others if they get this pathogen rather than just the risk to themselves.


The problem is, 73% of drivers think they're above-average drivers[1]. So just as you can't know whether you're the one spreading COVID, you can't know if you're the bad driver.

The solution is to get rid of cars as a primary mode of transport, and I really do think we should do that!

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-are-overconfident-...


> So just as you can't know whether you're the one spreading COVID, you can't know if you're the bad the driver.

This really isn't remotely analogous, particularly since you absolutely can know you're at risk of spreading COVID.


You added the "at risk" part, not me! :)

Your version applies to cars too! By driving a car, you are at risk of causing a car crash!


You said "you can't know"

With COVID, you can. Pretty easily.


Sorry, I might not be understanding where you're going with this. I initially thought you meant "you can know you're at risk of spreading COVID, because everyone is at risk of spreading COVID."

Certainly, anyone who receives a positive PCR test for COVID should quarantine ASAP. But if you're incubating COVID, but not infectious yet, the tests will return negative. A test only tells you whether you were infectious at the time of the test, so by the time you've seen the results, the information is already outdated.


> I initially thought you meant "you can know you're at risk of spreading COVID, because everyone is at risk of spreading COVID."

No. That wouldn't be a particularly useful statement.

Dismissing the aggregate risks solely based on your own is short sighted.


Bad driving begets bad driving. Some jackass cuts you up dangerously, your adrenaline is pumping and you then follow too close behind a third driver repeat ad nauseam


Sure seems to be in the mid Atlantic region of the US. Also, I’m sure you get the point they were making, why be unreasonable about it?


Is there a better name for the "playing dumb" style of argument?




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