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Do you have similar feelings about other convenience/death trade offs? Getting rid of soft drink, fast food, alcohol, all sorts of things would save so very ma

Do you have similar feelings about other convenience/death trade offs? Getting rid of soft drink, fast food, alcohol, all sorts of things would save so very many years while overall I would think impact lives less than corona virus measures do. Particularly quality adjusted life years.

jacobolus 6y ago
You drinking Coke or eating fries will not directly lead to the death of your neighbor’s mother, and has no chance to start chains of infection that could kill hundreds or thousands of people. I do e.g. feel pretty strongly that people who drive cars while drunk or high are being incredibly selfish and antisocial (not to mention breaking the law). I do feel that cigarette companies doing their best to trick people into using products that directly lead to their deaths are unethical. Likewise it is unethical for people to dump toxic sludge into the local river. And so on. In normal times, public officials should try to err on the side of letting people do things that are personally risky but don’t kill third parties (say, skydiving, participating in contact sports, drinking cocktails, or having casual sex), while trying to accurately inform people of the risks involved. During a pandemic, however, public officials must be willing to take more extreme measures when the public is not compliant with basic precautions. Luckily this pandemic doesn’t actually require so strict a lockdown as was done in China. Getting everyone to wear masks while in public and dramatically reducing people’s indoor gatherings seems to be enough to get the reproductive number below 1. It seems that grocery store visits, take-out/delivery meals, exercise outdoors, limited social gatherings outdoors with reasonable precautions, etc. can effectively balance people’s basic social needs with controlling the epidemic. Any workers whose jobs are not possible under such precautions should be paid by the state until the crisis is less acute.

jacobolus 6y ago

You drinking Coke or eating fries will not directly lead to the death of your neighbor’s mother, and has no chance to start chains of infection that could kill hundreds or thousands of people. I do e.g. feel pretty strongly that people who drive cars while drunk or high are being incredibly selfish and antisocial (not to mention breaking the law). I do feel that cigarette companies doing their best to trick people into using products that directly lead to their deaths are unethical. Likewise it is unethical for people to dump toxic sludge into the local river. And so on. In normal times, public officials should try to err on the side of letting people do things that are personally risky but don’t kill third parties (say, skydiving, participating in contact sports, drinking cocktails, or having casual sex), while trying to accurately inform people of the risks involved. During a pandemic, however, public officials must be willing to take more extreme measures when the public is not compliant with basic precautions. Luckily this pandemic doesn’t actually require so strict a lockdown as was done in China. Getting everyone to wear masks while in public and dramatically reducing people’s indoor gatherings seems to be enough to get the reproductive number below 1. It seems that grocery store visits, take-out/delivery meals, exercise outdoors, limited social gatherings outdoors with reasonable precautions, etc. can effectively balance people’s basic social needs with controlling the epidemic. Any workers whose jobs are not possible under such precautions should be paid by the state until the crisis is less acute.