Facts show seatbelts do save lives. I was a hard core not gonna wear one, safer with out it, what if I run in the river type of advocate.. Basically because I'm old enough to remember riding in cars as a kid when nobody wore one.. Heck ya only had a lap belt if ya did want one. However all the research statistics in the world couldn't convince a majority of the population to wear one. So what did we do, put a little financial incentive "Fines" behind it, and wow, very quickly people started to conform. Deaths dropped, and now you can actually buy, and afford insure, a 500hp plus car. Who'd have thought that in the 80's??
I for one can say for certain I wouldn't be here today without a helmet law, or a seatbelt law. But both saved my life on different occasions. A 150' Superman flight head first into the pavement, only to be surpassed by 14G impact recorded on a SRS module will make you a believer in safety equipment, even if you don't remember either...
But enough about seatbelt laws, here is why I bring up the skin in the game on wearing a mask. Take a look at these numbers my buddy sent me tonight. Austraila is roughly 1/10 the population of the USA, majority of it in two big cites. They stated out about same day as we did on this Corona holiday. However they put skin in the game early, and teeth behind the fines. When we locked down, they did to, but with an up to $5000 fine for breaking the rules. So I ask today about mask wearing, and he said no fines now, but a majority still wears one out in the stores and public shops, but it's slacking off more than most would like to see. They had a recent outbreak.. Or as I would call the numbers, a typical day on a college campus here...
Hard to dispute these results.. 1/10th our size, same mortality to infection rate, but overall their whole country is running dead even with Franklin Co "Columbus" Ohio...
The latest data on the coronavirus pandemic in your local area, across Australia and around the world.
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