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> Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so

> Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible. The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. I intentionally phrased that harshly, but it is indisputably true. In the US, 70,000 people died from the influenza season of 2018-2019. We could have sharply reduced that through quarantine measures. But no one wants to do that. Once you accept that everyone is prepared to allow others to die preventable deaths for their own convenience, then all you are talking about is a matter of degree. It can't be immoral to believe 1 death is okay, but 2 is wrong. That's just an opinion. The only difference between believing 70,000 is okay, and 700,000 is not is a gut feeling about how much preventable death is worth it to maintain our living standards.

leto_ii 6y ago
All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the gold standard. In reality, of course, things don't work out that way. The analogy with a flu season is deeply misleading. The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed more people than the worst flu seasons, with extraordinary measures in place all over the world. It's completely reasonable to assume that without lockdowns we would have had millions of deaths already. > The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. It may be so. Those people are morally wrong however. This is a deep point that I have insisted on in other comments as well. Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society. > The only difference between believing 70,000 is okay, and 700,000 is not is a gut feeling about how much preventable death is worth it to maintain our living standards. That is not true. Deaths caused by the regular flu are deeply regrettable and should be prevented as much as possible. If you dig into the data however, you will see that the coronavirus not only kills many more people than the flu, but it also kills people who would otherwise have many more years left to live. Diabetes, a heart condition or age > 65 yrs. shouldn't be death sentences in a modern civilized society.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society. The reality is quite different. We accept a risk of death to ourselves and others in everything we do. You do it, too. Everything. You even risk death by doing nothing. You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it". But how many lives could be saved at $1b each before we run out of money? Then what? And what about the lives that could have been saved at $1m apiece? If someone not willing to give up all of his assets to save someone else's life, is he uncivilized and morally wrong?
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    > You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it". This a common, yet unrealistic, hypothetical. In reality, of course, death is inevitable regardless of the economic costs. Past a certain point everybody, so far, has died. The amount of things that we can do in order to prevent any given death doesn't scale with the economic cost, past a certain (quite low) point. Spending 1B on a person won't get you 1000 times better 'medical stuff' than spending 1 million; therefore, a trade-off of e.g. one life for 1B vs 1000 lives for 1m is illusory. In practice all societies have limited resources. My position is, however, that those limited resources, in the case of an acute health crisis, should be focused as much as possible on mitigating that crisis, without having primary concern for the economic costs.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- grawprog 6y ago
  >All preventable deaths should be prevented What's a preventable death? Everybody dies eventually, there's no such thing as a preventable death. There's delaying death, but everyone dies. Period.
zasz 6y ago
Yes, fortunately most people agree that stopping covid lies on the unacceptable side of the line.
whoisthemachine 6y ago
It has much less to do with people dying directly from Covid and more to do with the sheer number of severe Covid cases overloading healthcare systems to the point that patients with other serious conditions can't receive medical treatment. This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. This condition is what incentivizes societies to lock down, not just the mere occurrence of a new disease. If a society's healthcare system can handle a severe influx of serious Covid cases, then you typically have seen that government's restrictions lift.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. Not Florida. An article from yesterday (https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-less-than-25-of-its-icu-beds-available/ https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-l...) ominously claims that "less than 25%" of ICU beds are available in the state, but actually read it and see that 90% occupancy rates are normal, and only a few of those in the ICU are COVID19 cases. Texas? Let's look at Houston, where for a month it's been "we'll be running out of ICU beds in two weeks" every week. Italian and New York hospitals were overwhelmed because a) both places put sick elderly into old age homes. b) Like elsewhere early on, doctors put everyone serious onto ventilators in a mistaken belief that they should treat patients like they do ARDS cases based on blood oxygen levels. This damaged healthy lung sacs and caused long-term dependence on mechanical respiration that doctors found almost impossible to wean patients from, and other side effects like deep vein thrombosis; Nick Cordero is a recent example. This article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...) was completely vindicated in retrospect. (And even NYC being overwhelmed was thankfully temporary. That's why the military hospital ship sent there was not used.) The mean time between symptoms and death is 14 days (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...). 99% of cases where people with COVID19 stay in the hospital for months is because of b), and neither a) nor b) is happening now.
  - 6y ago
fzeroracer 6y ago
So let's expand on that a bit then. Cancer is a rather big problem. It taxes society quite a bit, costs a lot of money and in general inconveniences quite a lot of people that need to support or help cancer patients. Would you agree then that perhaps it's a better idea to let cancer patients die rather than try and find cures or reduce the chances of dying? Why or why not? If you had cancer but of the curable kind, would you accept the state killing you because it inconveniences others?
- jlmorton 6y ago
  My point is not that society should take no effort to reduce preventable deaths. Society should do whatever we collectively want to do. Rather, my point was that it's hypocritical to argue that anyone that does not want to continue major disruptions is either immoral, uncivilized, or an absolute monster. Everyone attaches some value X to human life, and some value Z to normal functioning. Not everyone values these things the same. But everyone certainly has a value, and almost everyone is okay with allowing many tens of thousands annually to die a preventable death in order to avoid disruptions to life. That being true, let's stop the moralizing arguments, and focus instead on why coronavirus is worse than other illnesses, and why it's worth it to continue our efforts to disrupt it. In other words, my argument is really about language and rhetoric, not the coronavirus itself.
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    I think your argument is nonsense and pedantic to be completely honest. For example, being against the treatment of the Uighurs in China would be an example of moralizing if we took your argument to the extreme. The government in China simply places lesser value on their lives and since we all attach different values to human lives it's hypocritical to criticize their treatment. You're avoiding the actual argument at hand in favor of nitpicking the rhetoric. Basically, tone policing. And I don't think tone arguments solve anything over than diversion.
takeda 6y ago
Not sure where you get 70,000. On average it's 16,000 - 40,000 per year, there was a really bad flu on 2017-2018, which killed about 61,000 people, but on 2018-2019 it killed 34,000[1]. Anyway, your point stands, but there are people who think covid deaths are no higher than a bad flu, and your numbers seem to mislead in that direction. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
- jlmorton 6y ago
  It appears they revised the estimate: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm > Can you explain why the estimates on this page are different from previously published and reported estimates for 2017-2018? (For example, total flu-related deaths during 2017-2018 was previously estimated to be 79,000, but the current estimate is 61,000)? > The estimates on this page have been updated from an earlier report published in December 2018 based on more recently available information. There is a trade-off between timeliness and accuracy of the burden estimates. To provide timely burden estimates to the public, clinicians, and public health decision-makers, we use preliminary data that may lead to over- or under-estimates of the true burden. However, each season’s estimates will be finalized when data on testing practices and deaths for that season are available.
  - takeda 6y ago
    You were talking about 2018-2019 though. The 2017-2018 was an outlier and it is misleading to use it as an example of typical flu.
- collyw 6y ago
  I am leaning towards the lock down skepticism. It's not that I think that Covid is not worse than a flu, it is worse, but there response is unparalleled. We have had a strict lockdown and lots of deaths anyway. The initial predictions about the virus turned out to be way off, it seems to be more infectious and less dangerous than we were initially told Initially lockdown was to "flatten the curve", stop the hospitals an in particular the ICU beds from getting overwhelmed. That worked, and while it got close to breaking point here in Spain we made it through. I noticed as new data emerged from Sweden - they hadn't spiralled out of control as many, including myself, predicted. Flatten the curve seemed to be forgotten about, and it turned into a pointless competition of who has the least cases, least excess deaths - pointless because this is far from over. Or maybe we are past the worst of it already - the Diamond Princess cruise ship showed only 20% of the passengers infected - so maybe covid only affects 20% of the population.

leto_ii 6y ago

All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the gold standard. In reality, of course, things don't work out that way. The analogy with a flu season is deeply misleading. The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed more people than the worst flu seasons, with extraordinary measures in place all over the world. It's completely reasonable to assume that without lockdowns we would have had millions of deaths already. > The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. It may be so. Those people are morally wrong however. This is a deep point that I have insisted on in other comments as well. Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society. > The only difference between believing 70,000 is okay, and 700,000 is not is a gut feeling about how much preventable death is worth it to maintain our living standards. That is not true. Deaths caused by the regular flu are deeply regrettable and should be prevented as much as possible. If you dig into the data however, you will see that the coronavirus not only kills many more people than the flu, but it also kills people who would otherwise have many more years left to live. Diabetes, a heart condition or age > 65 yrs. shouldn't be death sentences in a modern civilized society.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 6y ago
> Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society. The reality is quite different. We accept a risk of death to ourselves and others in everything we do. You do it, too. Everything. You even risk death by doing nothing. You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it". But how many lives could be saved at $1b each before we run out of money? Then what? And what about the lives that could have been saved at $1m apiece? If someone not willing to give up all of his assets to save someone else's life, is he uncivilized and morally wrong?
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it". This a common, yet unrealistic, hypothetical. In reality, of course, death is inevitable regardless of the economic costs. Past a certain point everybody, so far, has died. The amount of things that we can do in order to prevent any given death doesn't scale with the economic cost, past a certain (quite low) point. Spending 1B on a person won't get you 1000 times better 'medical stuff' than spending 1 million; therefore, a trade-off of e.g. one life for 1B vs 1000 lives for 1m is illusory. In practice all societies have limited resources. My position is, however, that those limited resources, in the case of an acute health crisis, should be focused as much as possible on mitigating that crisis, without having primary concern for the economic costs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
grawprog 6y ago
>All preventable deaths should be prevented What's a preventable death? Everybody dies eventually, there's no such thing as a preventable death. There's delaying death, but everyone dies. Period.

zasz 6y ago

Yes, fortunately most people agree that stopping covid lies on the unacceptable side of the line.

whoisthemachine 6y ago

It has much less to do with people dying directly from Covid and more to do with the sheer number of severe Covid cases overloading healthcare systems to the point that patients with other serious conditions can't receive medical treatment. This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. This condition is what incentivizes societies to lock down, not just the mere occurrence of a new disease. If a society's healthcare system can handle a severe influx of serious Covid cases, then you typically have seen that government's restrictions lift.

TMWNN 6y ago
>This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. Not Florida. An article from yesterday (https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-less-than-25-of-its-icu-beds-available/ https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-l...) ominously claims that "less than 25%" of ICU beds are available in the state, but actually read it and see that 90% occupancy rates are normal, and only a few of those in the ICU are COVID19 cases. Texas? Let's look at Houston, where for a month it's been "we'll be running out of ICU beds in two weeks" every week. Italian and New York hospitals were overwhelmed because a) both places put sick elderly into old age homes. b) Like elsewhere early on, doctors put everyone serious onto ventilators in a mistaken belief that they should treat patients like they do ARDS cases based on blood oxygen levels. This damaged healthy lung sacs and caused long-term dependence on mechanical respiration that doctors found almost impossible to wean patients from, and other side effects like deep vein thrombosis; Nick Cordero is a recent example. This article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...) was completely vindicated in retrospect. (And even NYC being overwhelmed was thankfully temporary. That's why the military hospital ship sent there was not used.) The mean time between symptoms and death is 14 days (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...). 99% of cases where people with COVID19 stay in the hospital for months is because of b), and neither a) nor b) is happening now.
- 6y ago

fzeroracer 6y ago

So let's expand on that a bit then. Cancer is a rather big problem. It taxes society quite a bit, costs a lot of money and in general inconveniences quite a lot of people that need to support or help cancer patients. Would you agree then that perhaps it's a better idea to let cancer patients die rather than try and find cures or reduce the chances of dying? Why or why not? If you had cancer but of the curable kind, would you accept the state killing you because it inconveniences others?

jlmorton 6y ago
My point is not that society should take no effort to reduce preventable deaths. Society should do whatever we collectively want to do. Rather, my point was that it's hypocritical to argue that anyone that does not want to continue major disruptions is either immoral, uncivilized, or an absolute monster. Everyone attaches some value X to human life, and some value Z to normal functioning. Not everyone values these things the same. But everyone certainly has a value, and almost everyone is okay with allowing many tens of thousands annually to die a preventable death in order to avoid disruptions to life. That being true, let's stop the moralizing arguments, and focus instead on why coronavirus is worse than other illnesses, and why it's worth it to continue our efforts to disrupt it. In other words, my argument is really about language and rhetoric, not the coronavirus itself.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I think your argument is nonsense and pedantic to be completely honest. For example, being against the treatment of the Uighurs in China would be an example of moralizing if we took your argument to the extreme. The government in China simply places lesser value on their lives and since we all attach different values to human lives it's hypocritical to criticize their treatment. You're avoiding the actual argument at hand in favor of nitpicking the rhetoric. Basically, tone policing. And I don't think tone arguments solve anything over than diversion.

takeda 6y ago

Not sure where you get 70,000. On average it's 16,000 - 40,000 per year, there was a really bad flu on 2017-2018, which killed about 61,000 people, but on 2018-2019 it killed 34,000[1]. Anyway, your point stands, but there are people who think covid deaths are no higher than a bad flu, and your numbers seem to mislead in that direction. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

jlmorton 6y ago
It appears they revised the estimate: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm > Can you explain why the estimates on this page are different from previously published and reported estimates for 2017-2018? (For example, total flu-related deaths during 2017-2018 was previously estimated to be 79,000, but the current estimate is 61,000)? > The estimates on this page have been updated from an earlier report published in December 2018 based on more recently available information. There is a trade-off between timeliness and accuracy of the burden estimates. To provide timely burden estimates to the public, clinicians, and public health decision-makers, we use preliminary data that may lead to over- or under-estimates of the true burden. However, each season’s estimates will be finalized when data on testing practices and deaths for that season are available.
- takeda 6y ago
  You were talking about 2018-2019 though. The 2017-2018 was an outlier and it is misleading to use it as an example of typical flu.
collyw 6y ago
I am leaning towards the lock down skepticism. It's not that I think that Covid is not worse than a flu, it is worse, but there response is unparalleled. We have had a strict lockdown and lots of deaths anyway. The initial predictions about the virus turned out to be way off, it seems to be more infectious and less dangerous than we were initially told Initially lockdown was to "flatten the curve", stop the hospitals an in particular the ICU beds from getting overwhelmed. That worked, and while it got close to breaking point here in Spain we made it through. I noticed as new data emerged from Sweden - they hadn't spiralled out of control as many, including myself, predicted. Flatten the curve seemed to be forgotten about, and it turned into a pointless competition of who has the least cases, least excess deaths - pointless because this is far from over. Or maybe we are past the worst of it already - the Diamond Princess cruise ship showed only 20% of the passengers infected - so maybe covid only affects 20% of the population.