6 ms·

That is a completely inhumane statement. You may not believe that "the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members";

That is a completely inhumane statement. You may not believe that "the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members"; but how dare you say that someone losing a parent or loved one is "less damaging". And less damaging to what? The economy? The economy will survive. Your grandparents won't.

jdxcode 6y ago
Young people lose more of their own life than older people.
pugio 6y ago
He specifically says "less damaging" ... "on human capital", implying a workforce/economic perspective. I would suggest you consider toning down your outrage. It's important and necessary to be able to compare and contrast tragedies without devolving into arguments about the incommensurability of human life. Such discussions may appear cold and calculating ("inhumane") but we must have them - ignoring a part of reality because it hurts does not make it go away. I have seen reactions similar to yours around people unused to discussing issues like medical triage. If we truly want to understand a phenomenon, mitigate its impact, and do the actual most good, we need to be able to analyze and compare things from all angles: social, economic, political, moral, emotional, etc. So long as such discussions are conducted in a shared context of understanding how weighty and intense these issues are (as it seems to me the parent was doing), they are for the good.
- lenitabinol 6y ago
  Wise words. Wish more people took this measured approach to complex issues.
- watwut 6y ago
  United States economically gained on WWII. So at least economically, that was not bigger loss. So I don't think he meant economic loss from the event.
- wobblyasp 6y ago
  Toning down my outrage? We are talking about human lives. Opening up the economy more broadly WILL equate to more deaths in all age groups. The western world had an opportunity to contain and eradicate the disease. We failed. The weak and infirm should not have to pay the price for our thick headedness.
  - pugio 6y ago
    > Toning down my outrage? We are talking about human lives I would be great very grateful to other HNers if someone could point me towards a book or resource for how to effectively communicate with people who are in this mental groove. I feel as though my point was missed, and I can't think of any more effective way to convey it. (EDIT: I suppose I could say that outrage tends to shut down discussion by inciting emotion over reason. I feel just as strongly about these human lives, which is why I want to be able to talk about them clearly. I do not think saying this will affect the parent's mode, and I'm wondering if there's some better way to do that.)
    - lazylizard 6y ago
      i have friends like this. if I'd asked. would you propose we ban cars? they'd just be even angrier. I've largely given up.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I don't like putting a dollar value on a human life so find it impossible to weigh damage to the economy and deaths. I haven't seen much discussion about at what point damage to the economy means we can't feed ourselves and medicine stops flowing. I have always wondered if we could "pivot" fast enough to feed everybody if the economy literately died. I did read somewhere that Australian cities have 7 days of clean water after international shipping stops (in war for example). We are dependent on international shipping for chemicals that clean our water.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    > I don't like putting a dollar value on a human life In the US the value of a human life is about $10 million, or about $150k per QALY. Every single developed nation has put a dollar value on human life, and continues to do so, because without it you can't possibly allocate scarce resources like healthcare to achieve the greatest good. It helps save more lives than the alternative strategy you propose, i.e. sticking your head in the sand to avoid thinking about it because it's unpleasant.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I think there is a really giant leap between comparing an economists statistical value of a persons life, and some number that we guess might be the "damage to the economy". What I'm suggesting is that we make sure we have food security, make sure we can provide medial care to the best of our ability, then pay whatever it costs to save peoples lives. I would pay every sent I have to stay alive. I think most people would. I think the governments should take the same approach. And yes, sure, most of the time it's super hard to decide what to do, but for this virus, we know all you have to do it isolate from each other for a few months. It's not even that hard. --- As a side note I can't wait till somebody uses that 10m figure and applies it to deaths as a result of obesity. You think social isolation is hard, you should try giving up sugar, now that is hard!
      - jay_kyburz 6y ago
        Update: I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Obesity linked to "100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year" or at 10m a life 10-40 Trillion Dollars a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  It's also the case that "the economy" is what's paying for all our advanced healthcare that is saving lives and enabling people to live longer, healthier, happier lives. Recessions destroy lives as well, everything is a trade-off, a balance. And people were clearly happy to make this trade-off every single day pre-corona. We don't lower the speed limit to 30mph, even though that would almost eliminate every single traffic accident. We don't ban certain pesticides that are really bad for the environment, because they work really well and increase the yield. We allow dangerous jobs where people can be maimed or killed, because someone needs to do it. We allow people to go parachuting, we allow smoking, unhealthy food, we allow people to own and use guns, even though all of these things let people injure and kill themselves and others. Humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment, we undervalue known risks and overvalue unknown risks, and that's clearly what's going on with the lockdown hysteria, because the response is so clearly disproportional compared to how we're handling similar threats with similar risk profiles.
collyw 6y ago
Disagree. The average age of death from covid seems to be pretty much the same as average age of death in a few countries that I have seen the comparison done (Uk being one of them). Do you really think keeping someone alive in a care home (where most of the deaths occurred) for an extra year or so is the same as someone in tehir 20's being killed? You seem to underestimate the suffering that the economic damage will cause. It's already predicted that more will die from hunger due to the measures that have been taken than from the virus itself. https://time.com/5864803/oxfam-hunger-covid-19/ https://time.com/5864803/oxfam-hunger-covid-19/
- watwut 6y ago
  Wars kill old people too? Specifically care home people end up dying from lack of nutrition, inability to escape. Old handle hardship of being refuge badly. WWII had higher civilian casualties then soldiers. That is not to remove suffering of soldiers, but people here tend to talk about wars as if it did not affected everyone living there.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  There is no "economic" reason somebody needs to die of hunger. We may choose not to give food to hungry people, and we might choose to not pivot to food production.
  - collyw 6y ago
    Are you going to get food to those people? I personally don't have the money to deliver it to all of them.
salt-licker 6y ago
Quality-Adjusted Life Years is a common measure of disease burden. Also, I think a parent who has lost a child would have something to say to you about the difference in emotional impact
vortico 6y ago
The older I get, the less I value the rest of my life. So it's fair to say that younger deaths are worse than older deaths on a society scale.
- wobblyasp 6y ago
  You value your life less as you get old; however, much like religion, we should not be forcing our own views on everyone else. There are plenty of elderly who would love nothing more then to continuing to see their children, and their children's children grow up; and who would much rather not die intubated, or worse, suffocating.
  - vortico 6y ago
    Are you saying that elderly prefer to see their children die first or themselves? We're not debating whether they want to die or not, that's obvious. We're debating whether they value their lives more than their children or children's children.
cco 6y ago
My only remaining grandfather is 89 years old. He still skies during the winter, his cognition is still good, that is to say he still has a full life. I would kill him without thinking too hard if it meant saving my nephew, aged 10, from dying. My grandfather lived a full life and I'm sure if he had the choice to trade his life for his great grandchild he'd sacrifice what he has remaining in order to gift the chance at that same full life to his progeny. On a societal scale we think the same way, an 80 year old dying is less bad than a 10 year old dying, its less tragic both emotionally and from society's perspective, economically. Losing a grandparent is tough, losing a sibling in the prime of their life is terrible, and losing a child is devastating. I can't comment on OP's feelings on the subject, they could have aid it in a callous and inhumane way, I don't know their inner thoughts, but the essence is true even if it is painful.
randomsearch 6y ago
“Completely inhumane” is one of those phrases that immediately raises suspicion that someone is not listening but rather had already made their mind up. Do you really think that someone truly has no humanity? Isn’t it more likely that you don’t get where they’re coming from? Even intuitively, war seems much more damaging than a pandemic if an equal number of people die in both.
cik2e 6y ago
Here is a rundown of attempts to quantify the statistical value of a human life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life Obviously, these methods don’t account for the emotional value to loved ones. Maybe they should. Attempts to quantify that could include factors like mental health, and future wages (e.g. losing a parent earlier in life).
starwatch 6y ago
An interesting listen to how human life is valued was published fairly recently. Quite sobering: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-vs-the-economy https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v...
systemvoltage 6y ago
I totally agree. Sorry, I did preface it "As unethical as it sounds". Your comment seems to be "cancelling" mine purely on emotional basis despite of prefacing my intentions. God forbid, if I had purely stated it with no warnings. I agree, it is pretty shitty to thing to say that older people are not as valuable to the society as the young. There is objectivity and truth to it, although it might be unpleasant. I am afraid that this is what's going on in the world today - objectivity takes a backseat, emotional and knee-jerk "cancel" culture prevails. It deeply bothers me.

jdxcode 6y ago

Young people lose more of their own life than older people.

pugio 6y ago

He specifically says "less damaging" ... "on human capital", implying a workforce/economic perspective. I would suggest you consider toning down your outrage. It's important and necessary to be able to compare and contrast tragedies without devolving into arguments about the incommensurability of human life. Such discussions may appear cold and calculating ("inhumane") but we must have them - ignoring a part of reality because it hurts does not make it go away. I have seen reactions similar to yours around people unused to discussing issues like medical triage. If we truly want to understand a phenomenon, mitigate its impact, and do the actual most good, we need to be able to analyze and compare things from all angles: social, economic, political, moral, emotional, etc. So long as such discussions are conducted in a shared context of understanding how weighty and intense these issues are (as it seems to me the parent was doing), they are for the good.

lenitabinol 6y ago
Wise words. Wish more people took this measured approach to complex issues.
watwut 6y ago
United States economically gained on WWII. So at least economically, that was not bigger loss. So I don't think he meant economic loss from the event.
wobblyasp 6y ago
Toning down my outrage? We are talking about human lives. Opening up the economy more broadly WILL equate to more deaths in all age groups. The western world had an opportunity to contain and eradicate the disease. We failed. The weak and infirm should not have to pay the price for our thick headedness.
- pugio 6y ago
  > Toning down my outrage? We are talking about human lives I would be great very grateful to other HNers if someone could point me towards a book or resource for how to effectively communicate with people who are in this mental groove. I feel as though my point was missed, and I can't think of any more effective way to convey it. (EDIT: I suppose I could say that outrage tends to shut down discussion by inciting emotion over reason. I feel just as strongly about these human lives, which is why I want to be able to talk about them clearly. I do not think saying this will affect the parent's mode, and I'm wondering if there's some better way to do that.)
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    i have friends like this. if I'd asked. would you propose we ban cars? they'd just be even angrier. I've largely given up.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
I don't like putting a dollar value on a human life so find it impossible to weigh damage to the economy and deaths. I haven't seen much discussion about at what point damage to the economy means we can't feed ourselves and medicine stops flowing. I have always wondered if we could "pivot" fast enough to feed everybody if the economy literately died. I did read somewhere that Australian cities have 7 days of clean water after international shipping stops (in war for example). We are dependent on international shipping for chemicals that clean our water.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  > I don't like putting a dollar value on a human life In the US the value of a human life is about $10 million, or about $150k per QALY. Every single developed nation has put a dollar value on human life, and continues to do so, because without it you can't possibly allocate scarce resources like healthcare to achieve the greatest good. It helps save more lives than the alternative strategy you propose, i.e. sticking your head in the sand to avoid thinking about it because it's unpleasant.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    I think there is a really giant leap between comparing an economists statistical value of a persons life, and some number that we guess might be the "damage to the economy". What I'm suggesting is that we make sure we have food security, make sure we can provide medial care to the best of our ability, then pay whatever it costs to save peoples lives. I would pay every sent I have to stay alive. I think most people would. I think the governments should take the same approach. And yes, sure, most of the time it's super hard to decide what to do, but for this virus, we know all you have to do it isolate from each other for a few months. It's not even that hard. --- As a side note I can't wait till somebody uses that 10m figure and applies it to deaths as a result of obesity. You think social isolation is hard, you should try giving up sugar, now that is hard!
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      Update: I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Obesity linked to "100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year" or at 10m a life 10-40 Trillion Dollars a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States
henrikschroder 6y ago
It's also the case that "the economy" is what's paying for all our advanced healthcare that is saving lives and enabling people to live longer, healthier, happier lives. Recessions destroy lives as well, everything is a trade-off, a balance. And people were clearly happy to make this trade-off every single day pre-corona. We don't lower the speed limit to 30mph, even though that would almost eliminate every single traffic accident. We don't ban certain pesticides that are really bad for the environment, because they work really well and increase the yield. We allow dangerous jobs where people can be maimed or killed, because someone needs to do it. We allow people to go parachuting, we allow smoking, unhealthy food, we allow people to own and use guns, even though all of these things let people injure and kill themselves and others. Humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment, we undervalue known risks and overvalue unknown risks, and that's clearly what's going on with the lockdown hysteria, because the response is so clearly disproportional compared to how we're handling similar threats with similar risk profiles.

collyw 6y ago

Disagree. The average age of death from covid seems to be pretty much the same as average age of death in a few countries that I have seen the comparison done (Uk being one of them). Do you really think keeping someone alive in a care home (where most of the deaths occurred) for an extra year or so is the same as someone in tehir 20's being killed? You seem to underestimate the suffering that the economic damage will cause. It's already predicted that more will die from hunger due to the measures that have been taken than from the virus itself. https://time.com/5864803/oxfam-hunger-covid-19/ https://time.com/5864803/oxfam-hunger-covid-19/

watwut 6y ago
Wars kill old people too? Specifically care home people end up dying from lack of nutrition, inability to escape. Old handle hardship of being refuge badly. WWII had higher civilian casualties then soldiers. That is not to remove suffering of soldiers, but people here tend to talk about wars as if it did not affected everyone living there.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
There is no "economic" reason somebody needs to die of hunger. We may choose not to give food to hungry people, and we might choose to not pivot to food production.
- collyw 6y ago
  Are you going to get food to those people? I personally don't have the money to deliver it to all of them.

salt-licker 6y ago

Quality-Adjusted Life Years is a common measure of disease burden. Also, I think a parent who has lost a child would have something to say to you about the difference in emotional impact

vortico 6y ago

The older I get, the less I value the rest of my life. So it's fair to say that younger deaths are worse than older deaths on a society scale.

wobblyasp 6y ago
You value your life less as you get old; however, much like religion, we should not be forcing our own views on everyone else. There are plenty of elderly who would love nothing more then to continuing to see their children, and their children's children grow up; and who would much rather not die intubated, or worse, suffocating.
- vortico 6y ago
  Are you saying that elderly prefer to see their children die first or themselves? We're not debating whether they want to die or not, that's obvious. We're debating whether they value their lives more than their children or children's children.

cco 6y ago

My only remaining grandfather is 89 years old. He still skies during the winter, his cognition is still good, that is to say he still has a full life. I would kill him without thinking too hard if it meant saving my nephew, aged 10, from dying. My grandfather lived a full life and I'm sure if he had the choice to trade his life for his great grandchild he'd sacrifice what he has remaining in order to gift the chance at that same full life to his progeny. On a societal scale we think the same way, an 80 year old dying is less bad than a 10 year old dying, its less tragic both emotionally and from society's perspective, economically. Losing a grandparent is tough, losing a sibling in the prime of their life is terrible, and losing a child is devastating. I can't comment on OP's feelings on the subject, they could have aid it in a callous and inhumane way, I don't know their inner thoughts, but the essence is true even if it is painful.

randomsearch 6y ago

“Completely inhumane” is one of those phrases that immediately raises suspicion that someone is not listening but rather had already made their mind up. Do you really think that someone truly has no humanity? Isn’t it more likely that you don’t get where they’re coming from? Even intuitively, war seems much more damaging than a pandemic if an equal number of people die in both.

cik2e 6y ago

Here is a rundown of attempts to quantify the statistical value of a human life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life Obviously, these methods don’t account for the emotional value to loved ones. Maybe they should. Attempts to quantify that could include factors like mental health, and future wages (e.g. losing a parent earlier in life).

starwatch 6y ago

An interesting listen to how human life is valued was published fairly recently. Quite sobering: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-vs-the-economy https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v...

systemvoltage 6y ago

I totally agree. Sorry, I did preface it "As unethical as it sounds". Your comment seems to be "cancelling" mine purely on emotional basis despite of prefacing my intentions. God forbid, if I had purely stated it with no warnings. I agree, it is pretty shitty to thing to say that older people are not as valuable to the society as the young. There is objectivity and truth to it, although it might be unpleasant. I am afraid that this is what's going on in the world today - objectivity takes a backseat, emotional and knee-jerk "cancel" culture prevails. It deeply bothers me.