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GP's point is fair though. Many developed economies are spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars tackling COVID. Have we done proper cost/benefit anal

GP's point is fair though. Many developed economies are spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars tackling COVID. Have we done proper cost/benefit analyses to verify whether that money could save or improve more lives in other areas?

oblio 6y ago
Have you heard of the Ford Pinto? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto I think a famous newspaper article at the time said something like: "Ford decided your life was worth $500". And it was after a cost benefit analysis. Covid has a fatality rate of, at best, 0.3%. At worst, higher than 3%. Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die. We can work on other issues in parallel, but prioritizing emergencies.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  > “ Covid has a fatality rate of, at best, 0.3%. At worst, higher than 3%.” The current fatality rate is 1% despite it is only measured by testing the most severe cases which end up in hospital. How did you come up with 3%? > “ Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die.” Latest science claims that we need 42% of a population to be infected to create herd immunity. Only this week we learned that slums in India (e.g in Mumbai) have reached herd immunity and are now the least affected in India where the rest of the country is struggling. 0.5-1% of 42% of 8 billion people (the expected number of deaths) is only twice as much as the yearly deaths from pollution. Additionally pollution kills 7 million every year. A novel virus is novel only once, so after 2-3 years COVID cannot even reach the deaths caused by pollution even if we tried hard. So overall it’s completely illogical why we respond to coronavirus with such draconian measures and at the same time are so blasé about pollution which is evidently more damaging overall.
  - necovek 6y ago
    I can't imagine the pollution death numbers to be directly/trivially correlated to pollution: pollution in a single place varies, victims move between places and pollution kills slowly, so it's not psychologically considered an urgency. Covid19 kills quickly, so it is trivial to establish correlation and causation: I would say that the world's response to Covid was driven by the narrative on social media. If you are asking why humans as a species are not smarter than they are to see through short/long term effects, well, beats me :) But I still don't want my close ones to contract coronavirus, so I am still largely social-distancing. But I only hope to get an electric car in a couple of years.
  - oblio 6y ago
    We aren't blasé about pollution... But to actually get rid of it as drastically as you seem to suggest would shrink our economies by 30% permanently, not for 6 months. Or at least until the alternative techs take over, which could be after decades. Coal plants? Gone today. Electricity production reduced by 30-50% in most countries. No ICE vehicles? I don't even know how many there are, but I'd imagine we're talking about 1 billion or more. Now that you're at it, goodbye trucking, taxis, 80% of public transportation, food delivery, ambulances, fire trucks, ... No planes or helicopters? Goodbye emergency search and rescue, weather services, crop spraying, etc. You haven't thought this through with your comparison ;-)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jack_h 6y ago
Look at the response to things such as mass shootings which, statistically, represent a small fraction of the total murders committed. Terrorist attacks (in the west) receive a disproportionate amount of attention compared to other problems as well. Perhaps it's because these things can disrupt anyone's daily life seemingly at random. Pollution on the other hand is just part of our daily lives. There are other things which fall into that category as well such as smoking, fast food, alcohol, etc. Perhaps we as a species, rightly or wrongly, fear the unexpected more than we fear the status quo, even if the latter is more harmful than the former. So we allocate resources to fix the former but not the latter.
- smabie 6y ago
  I mean, there's good reason for this. Air pollution is manageable because it's known, the market and people can take it into account and try and make informed decisions. Terrorists attacks do not have this property and the variance of the people they kill is quite high. This makes it hard to ignore.

oblio 6y ago

Have you heard of the Ford Pinto? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto I think a famous newspaper article at the time said something like: "Ford decided your life was worth $500". And it was after a cost benefit analysis. Covid has a fatality rate of, at best, 0.3%. At worst, higher than 3%. Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die. We can work on other issues in parallel, but prioritizing emergencies.

dustinmoris 6y ago
> “ Covid has a fatality rate of, at best, 0.3%. At worst, higher than 3%.” The current fatality rate is 1% despite it is only measured by testing the most severe cases which end up in hospital. How did you come up with 3%? > “ Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die.” Latest science claims that we need 42% of a population to be infected to create herd immunity. Only this week we learned that slums in India (e.g in Mumbai) have reached herd immunity and are now the least affected in India where the rest of the country is struggling. 0.5-1% of 42% of 8 billion people (the expected number of deaths) is only twice as much as the yearly deaths from pollution. Additionally pollution kills 7 million every year. A novel virus is novel only once, so after 2-3 years COVID cannot even reach the deaths caused by pollution even if we tried hard. So overall it’s completely illogical why we respond to coronavirus with such draconian measures and at the same time are so blasé about pollution which is evidently more damaging overall.
- necovek 6y ago
  I can't imagine the pollution death numbers to be directly/trivially correlated to pollution: pollution in a single place varies, victims move between places and pollution kills slowly, so it's not psychologically considered an urgency. Covid19 kills quickly, so it is trivial to establish correlation and causation: I would say that the world's response to Covid was driven by the narrative on social media. If you are asking why humans as a species are not smarter than they are to see through short/long term effects, well, beats me :) But I still don't want my close ones to contract coronavirus, so I am still largely social-distancing. But I only hope to get an electric car in a couple of years.
- oblio 6y ago
  We aren't blasé about pollution... But to actually get rid of it as drastically as you seem to suggest would shrink our economies by 30% permanently, not for 6 months. Or at least until the alternative techs take over, which could be after decades. Coal plants? Gone today. Electricity production reduced by 30-50% in most countries. No ICE vehicles? I don't even know how many there are, but I'd imagine we're talking about 1 billion or more. Now that you're at it, goodbye trucking, taxis, 80% of public transportation, food delivery, ambulances, fire trucks, ... No planes or helicopters? Goodbye emergency search and rescue, weather services, crop spraying, etc. You haven't thought this through with your comparison ;-)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jack_h 6y ago

Look at the response to things such as mass shootings which, statistically, represent a small fraction of the total murders committed. Terrorist attacks (in the west) receive a disproportionate amount of attention compared to other problems as well. Perhaps it's because these things can disrupt anyone's daily life seemingly at random. Pollution on the other hand is just part of our daily lives. There are other things which fall into that category as well such as smoking, fast food, alcohol, etc. Perhaps we as a species, rightly or wrongly, fear the unexpected more than we fear the status quo, even if the latter is more harmful than the former. So we allocate resources to fix the former but not the latter.

smabie 6y ago
I mean, there's good reason for this. Air pollution is manageable because it's known, the market and people can take it into account and try and make informed decisions. Terrorists attacks do not have this property and the variance of the people they kill is quite high. This makes it hard to ignore.