4 ms·

How much does it matter? How much are you willing to spend to kill someone from cancer in July than kill someone from pneumonia in May?

ceejayoz 7y ago
The idea that every one of the millions dead from COVID-19 would've died anyways in the same year is... unsupported, to say the least.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  The idea that many of them would have died anyways within a year or three is rather better supported, though. As is the idea that we need to run a cost-benefit analysis here.
  - btilly 7y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751269 for a cost benefit analysis. Long story short, it is worth it.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      As with iso1631 there, I disagree. The lockdown will only save significant numbers of lives if it lasts until we have a way to reduce population death rates (either via better treatment, prophylactics, or vaccines) OR if we can exterminate it entirely and prevent COVID-19 from becoming endemic to the US again. I think the latter is unlikely, and the former requires 6+months of lockdown. If we do three months of lockdown and then people give up and head out as normal again, we've burned a few trillion dollars, and a hundred million years of US citizen lives, for nothing. The deaths still come, just shifted back three months. That's the worst case, and it's what we might be heading for.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        It should be entirely possible to ramp up masks and ventilators in a couple months. China is already making immense amounts. Universal mask wearing would go a long way, especially with a much lower baseline of active infections.
  - iso1631 7y ago
    There are far too many unknown, and indeed unknowable variables, for a cost-benefit analysis, even if it were politically acceptable. There are broadly three options the US has 1) Total lockdown 2) Sporadic geographic lockdowns of various intenstiy 3) Do nothing Factors we don't know include how behavior would change even without top down pressures (i.e. doing nothing will still damage economic output), and how long lockdowns can last before protests, riots, and full on civil war, how effective a lockdown would be, what pressure there will be on healthcare providers in each scenario (including say healthcare workers refusing to treat patients) While our higher brains knows that as a society we are unwilling to spend $1 billion to extend someone's life by 2 days, when it comes to this sort of magnitude there are other considerations than financial benefits, indeed the entire situation brings questions of what is the value of money anyway. When we say we're willing to spend $150k to extend a life by a year, what does that actually mean?
btilly 7y ago
Over $20.000. I got that figure from http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,0... which suggests that a year of life should be worth about $130,000. So that is a bit over $10k per month. Furthermore your hypothetical is slanted to minimizing the problem. Sure, these people are often old and sick. The median age of those killed is around 80. But they were Generally not on death’s door. From https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html your average 80 year old has over 3 years to live. So we should be willing to spend at least $400k. Per life at the median. We are starting to talk about real money now. But even so it is still low. Because the arithmetic average of this grizzly calculation is pulled up a lot by the younger people who die. OK, I see you retort, so you’re coming to an order of a magnitude of a trillion dollars for the USA. But aren’t we doing more trillions in stimulus? Does that make sense? The answer is yes. When we “spend” trillions in stimulus, we get most of it back. (In 2008 we actually made a profit.) So even if you want to argue straight dollars and cents like an actuary does, we still come out ahead. Preserving human lives, even old people who do not have long to live, is valuable.
- iso1631 7y ago
  Lets say average life expectency of victims if they didn't have COVID is say 15 years. Lets say 2 million would die without a lockdown. That's 30 million years of life without a lockdown. In the U.S. a year of life is under $150k, so that's an upper "value" of lockdown of $4.5T U.S. GDP is 21T, so a 25% drop in GDP caused by a lockdown would not be value for money.
  - btilly 7y ago
    That is a good comparison point, and one I hadn't thought of. Currently Goldman Sachs is estimating that next quarter will see production drop by 24%. If production drops for a single quarter by that much then rebounds, this is still worthwhile on that estimate. If it drops for a whole year by that much, you are right that the implicit value we are giving these lives is more than we are willing to pay to save lives in other circumstances.
  - 7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago

The idea that every one of the millions dead from COVID-19 would've died anyways in the same year is... unsupported, to say the least.

DuskStar 7y ago
The idea that many of them would have died anyways within a year or three is rather better supported, though. As is the idea that we need to run a cost-benefit analysis here.
- btilly 7y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751269 for a cost benefit analysis. Long story short, it is worth it.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    As with iso1631 there, I disagree. The lockdown will only save significant numbers of lives if it lasts until we have a way to reduce population death rates (either via better treatment, prophylactics, or vaccines) OR if we can exterminate it entirely and prevent COVID-19 from becoming endemic to the US again. I think the latter is unlikely, and the former requires 6+months of lockdown. If we do three months of lockdown and then people give up and head out as normal again, we've burned a few trillion dollars, and a hundred million years of US citizen lives, for nothing. The deaths still come, just shifted back three months. That's the worst case, and it's what we might be heading for.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      It should be entirely possible to ramp up masks and ventilators in a couple months. China is already making immense amounts. Universal mask wearing would go a long way, especially with a much lower baseline of active infections.
- iso1631 7y ago
  There are far too many unknown, and indeed unknowable variables, for a cost-benefit analysis, even if it were politically acceptable. There are broadly three options the US has 1) Total lockdown 2) Sporadic geographic lockdowns of various intenstiy 3) Do nothing Factors we don't know include how behavior would change even without top down pressures (i.e. doing nothing will still damage economic output), and how long lockdowns can last before protests, riots, and full on civil war, how effective a lockdown would be, what pressure there will be on healthcare providers in each scenario (including say healthcare workers refusing to treat patients) While our higher brains knows that as a society we are unwilling to spend $1 billion to extend someone's life by 2 days, when it comes to this sort of magnitude there are other considerations than financial benefits, indeed the entire situation brings questions of what is the value of money anyway. When we say we're willing to spend $150k to extend a life by a year, what does that actually mean?

btilly 7y ago

Over $20.000. I got that figure from http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,0... which suggests that a year of life should be worth about $130,000. So that is a bit over $10k per month. Furthermore your hypothetical is slanted to minimizing the problem. Sure, these people are often old and sick. The median age of those killed is around 80. But they were Generally not on death’s door. From https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html your average 80 year old has over 3 years to live. So we should be willing to spend at least $400k. Per life at the median. We are starting to talk about real money now. But even so it is still low. Because the arithmetic average of this grizzly calculation is pulled up a lot by the younger people who die. OK, I see you retort, so you’re coming to an order of a magnitude of a trillion dollars for the USA. But aren’t we doing more trillions in stimulus? Does that make sense? The answer is yes. When we “spend” trillions in stimulus, we get most of it back. (In 2008 we actually made a profit.) So even if you want to argue straight dollars and cents like an actuary does, we still come out ahead. Preserving human lives, even old people who do not have long to live, is valuable.

iso1631 7y ago
Lets say average life expectency of victims if they didn't have COVID is say 15 years. Lets say 2 million would die without a lockdown. That's 30 million years of life without a lockdown. In the U.S. a year of life is under $150k, so that's an upper "value" of lockdown of $4.5T U.S. GDP is 21T, so a 25% drop in GDP caused by a lockdown would not be value for money.
- btilly 7y ago
  That is a good comparison point, and one I hadn't thought of. Currently Goldman Sachs is estimating that next quarter will see production drop by 24%. If production drops for a single quarter by that much then rebounds, this is still worthwhile on that estimate. If it drops for a whole year by that much, you are right that the implicit value we are giving these lives is more than we are willing to pay to save lives in other circumstances.
- 7y ago