4 ms·

It's not clear anything is saving lives. Once everything opens up we could be right where we started. Also we've said basically that people with coronavirus m

It's not clear anything is saving lives. Once everything opens up we could be right where we started. Also we've said basically that people with coronavirus matter more than other illnesses. There will be millions of deaths around the world because of shutdown. Things like AIDs medicine. Then thousands due to lack of treatment of cancers and people not going to doctor(England did a study on this). Then you'll have the domestic violence, murder rate increase. Then the negative effects on children decades later. It's only a trade off of lives, not a net saving of lives. If you think it's "clear" that any lives are being saved then I would challenge you to think more critically. The shutdown will be looked back on in 10 years as one of the worst mistakes the world has ever made.

StavrosK 6y ago
Why are you counting the increased ill effects of staying home but not the decreased ill effects of leaving home? No more car accidents, for example.
- chrisjs96 6y ago
  I know you live in a tech bubble, but people still have to physically go to a thing called work. You're telling me that some car accidents go down that will offset aids, tuberculosis, malaria. Not to mention cancer treatments, cancer not getting caught early, etc. You really do live in a bubble. While we cry about not having internet or that a face mask isn't covering someones nose completely, millions of people die around the world due to very preventable or treatable diseases. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberculosis-aids-malaria.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberc... https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30388-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...
mcguire 6y ago
This is one reason you need to look at all cause mortality. Another is that COVID specific counts don't catch all related deaths and include possible unrelated deaths.
- chrisjs96 6y ago
  I'm aware of excess death or all cause. This doesn't take in account the delay of deaths we're going to have. So we need to look at all cause globally in a year or two or ten
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
I don't think we're going to know in just 10 years. Maybe 50, or 100. For myself, I definitely sense that we (collectively, or nation by nation) could have followed various pathways (and to some extent, we did). The "right" answer was (and is) not known, and we had a choice between erring on the side of caution over the damage caused by the disease versus that caused by economic disruption. For now, I'm still in favor of erring in the direction of caution over the disease impact, but will concede that history may judge things quite differently.
- zaroth 6y ago
  The really thorny issues is that erring on the side of caution over the disease impact means that we are avoiding COVID cases at the expense of millions of undiagnosed / later-diagnosed cancer cases, and many other diseases. That’s just a piece of the all cause mortality due to the COVID response. And then after accepting all that direct cost, then you can start evaluating the economic damage on top (which to some extent is unavoidable regardless of lockdown policy).
- chrisjs96 6y ago
  Even though recessions cause loss of lives(as they always do), I'm not arguing we value the economy over lives. The economy will bounce back as it always does. I'm arguing that we should value all lives. We're only valuing covid lives over other lives right now. Meaning we're valuing our grandmother and great grandmothers lives over our brothers, sister, mothers, fathers even children. To be frank we have to look at average years of life loss with Covid. Let's call it how it is: The quarantine should just be called the life exchange.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Economies do not always "bounce back". In fact, after the major economic impacts of the 20th century, most economies worldwide required gigantic public policies targetting their rebuilding to reemerge, and even that tended to take many, many years.
    - 6y ago

StavrosK 6y ago

Why are you counting the increased ill effects of staying home but not the decreased ill effects of leaving home? No more car accidents, for example.

chrisjs96 6y ago
I know you live in a tech bubble, but people still have to physically go to a thing called work. You're telling me that some car accidents go down that will offset aids, tuberculosis, malaria. Not to mention cancer treatments, cancer not getting caught early, etc. You really do live in a bubble. While we cry about not having internet or that a face mask isn't covering someones nose completely, millions of people die around the world due to very preventable or treatable diseases. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberculosis-aids-malaria.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberc... https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30388-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

mcguire 6y ago

This is one reason you need to look at all cause mortality. Another is that COVID specific counts don't catch all related deaths and include possible unrelated deaths.

chrisjs96 6y ago
I'm aware of excess death or all cause. This doesn't take in account the delay of deaths we're going to have. So we need to look at all cause globally in a year or two or ten

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

I don't think we're going to know in just 10 years. Maybe 50, or 100. For myself, I definitely sense that we (collectively, or nation by nation) could have followed various pathways (and to some extent, we did). The "right" answer was (and is) not known, and we had a choice between erring on the side of caution over the damage caused by the disease versus that caused by economic disruption. For now, I'm still in favor of erring in the direction of caution over the disease impact, but will concede that history may judge things quite differently.

zaroth 6y ago
The really thorny issues is that erring on the side of caution over the disease impact means that we are avoiding COVID cases at the expense of millions of undiagnosed / later-diagnosed cancer cases, and many other diseases. That’s just a piece of the all cause mortality due to the COVID response. And then after accepting all that direct cost, then you can start evaluating the economic damage on top (which to some extent is unavoidable regardless of lockdown policy).
chrisjs96 6y ago
Even though recessions cause loss of lives(as they always do), I'm not arguing we value the economy over lives. The economy will bounce back as it always does. I'm arguing that we should value all lives. We're only valuing covid lives over other lives right now. Meaning we're valuing our grandmother and great grandmothers lives over our brothers, sister, mothers, fathers even children. To be frank we have to look at average years of life loss with Covid. Let's call it how it is: The quarantine should just be called the life exchange.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Economies do not always "bounce back". In fact, after the major economic impacts of the 20th century, most economies worldwide required gigantic public policies targetting their rebuilding to reemerge, and even that tended to take many, many years.
  - 6y ago