3 ms·
>prioritizing economic health I sense that everyone fairly well off sort of ignores how quickly poor economic health translates into poor social and biological
by basch 6y ago
>prioritizing economic health
I sense that everyone fairly well off sort of ignores how quickly poor economic health translates into poor social and biological health. We like to act like the economy is this nice to have extra that can shut down, and everything will go on as normal, except our luxuries. But then you realize, you cant shut down ports, railroads, roads, trucking, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target, every grocery store. And suddenly all the interconnected everything requires all the software companies to stay running. All the power companies. They all need their supplies.
>we cannot go full "save every possible life"
Where is the calculation of life lost or years lost of lifespan, because the economy wasn't there to support life.
>thus the term "flatten the curve"
I understood the context of flatten the curve to be in that we needed to buy time to prepare hospitals, manufacturing, and as a tool to prevent ICU overflow. It's now been co-opted to be used in a "until the vaccine" sort of way, which is not how it was used initially. You can see how people might have agreed with it before, but not now, and still have a consistent unchanging view (its the usage around their view that changed.) It's also very frustrating to hear rate statistics used out of context, as if the instantaneous rate is what matters, without the understanding that their denominator, time, extends into the future, and with part of the denominator in the future, the numerator is not very useful.
- unethical_ban 6y agoIt's odd that you're attacking what I said when I'm kind of supporting what you're saying. That we can't sustainably lock down indefinitely until a vaccine, that we need to balance the desire to protect lives with the need to live and work. Your statement about flatten the curve is exactly what I said. I will say, though, I bet we disagree on this: The federal government should have minted off a few more trillion dollars to keep people home as needed without them losing their jobs or insurance. Our American political/economic system is not built to keep people healthy or economically secure, and the government should take a more active role in fixing that.
- basch 6y agoIm not sure if I agree or disagree that blindly throwing more money is the right approach, but I can say I think we did a poor job of using the information we had early on (age, weight being major factors) and using that to selectively protect the most vulnerable. Locking down elderly care to an extreme level and having the social support and food to do so, might have saved more lives-years than keeping everyone at home. All in all, it just wasnt feasible to tell the elderly to stay home while the rest of the world continued humming. This was one way to get everybody to care. I wasn't disagreeing with what you said about flattening the curve, I'm saying its meaning has changed in some usages, from what you described to something else.