4 ms·

I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills

I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills mostly young children. All lives are valuable and worth fighting for, but it does seem that these losses are fundamentally worse than COVID. If we would count healthy years of life lost, rather than raw number of deaths, I think that would be more apparent.

tsimionescu 6y ago
A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
    - umvi 6y ago
      > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades
      - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        CoVID-19 has already killed as many Americans as flu typically does in 10 years. Only a relatively small percentage of Americans have gotten infected with SARS-CoV-2 yet. Without vaccination, in the space of a few years at most, CoVID-19 will kill as many people as flu does in many decades.
        umvi 6y ago
        Source? According to CDC, flu has killed 336k over the past 9 years[0] [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
        DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        The US is already at 250,000 confirmed CoVID-19 deaths, with over 1000 deaths every day, and rising.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Ok, so Covid 19 killed 60% as many people in one year as the flu in 10, and this only after huge efforts have been made to slow it down. Without the lockdowns and masks, it would have easily topped flu deaths for the decade. Much worse, if the Healthcare system gets overrun.
        umvi 6y ago
        Yeah only because it's a novel virus and there is little to no herd immunity. I'm sure flu killed even more its first year when it was novel (since we didn't know about how viruses spread). Once it is no longer novel it will be a seasonal virus likely that kills at similar rates to flu. The real question is, can we stop wearing masks once we've achieve herd immunity? Or is it worth wearing them cradle to grave to reduce seasonal deaths as well?
        tsimionescu 6y ago
- nostromo 6y ago
  When I lost my grandparents in their late 80s, my family reflected mostly on what a long, happy life they had. When I lost my sister-in-law due to an unknown brain tumor at 28, it was a catastrophic event from which her entirely family has never recovered. To say that these deaths are equivalent doesn’t seem right to me, even though I agree we should do everything we can to preserve healthy lifespan for everyone, young and old.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    You were probably lucky in that your grandparents died a peaceful and expected death. When I lost my grandmother in her late 70s the day we were visiting for her birthday, to a sudden heart-attack, all my family could feel was the hollowness left behind by her absence, and thoughts of all the life events she would miss, things unsaid and so on.
umvi 6y ago
This covers both your and OP's questions pretty well: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

tsimionescu 6y ago

A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.

josephcsible 6y ago
If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
  - umvi 6y ago
    > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades
    - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
      CoVID-19 has already killed as many Americans as flu typically does in 10 years. Only a relatively small percentage of Americans have gotten infected with SARS-CoV-2 yet. Without vaccination, in the space of a few years at most, CoVID-19 will kill as many people as flu does in many decades.
      - umvi 6y ago
        Source? According to CDC, flu has killed 336k over the past 9 years[0] [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
        DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        The US is already at 250,000 confirmed CoVID-19 deaths, with over 1000 deaths every day, and rising.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Ok, so Covid 19 killed 60% as many people in one year as the flu in 10, and this only after huge efforts have been made to slow it down. Without the lockdowns and masks, it would have easily topped flu deaths for the decade. Much worse, if the Healthcare system gets overrun.
        umvi 6y ago
        Yeah only because it's a novel virus and there is little to no herd immunity. I'm sure flu killed even more its first year when it was novel (since we didn't know about how viruses spread). Once it is no longer novel it will be a seasonal virus likely that kills at similar rates to flu. The real question is, can we stop wearing masks once we've achieve herd immunity? Or is it worth wearing them cradle to grave to reduce seasonal deaths as well?
        tsimionescu 6y ago
nostromo 6y ago
When I lost my grandparents in their late 80s, my family reflected mostly on what a long, happy life they had. When I lost my sister-in-law due to an unknown brain tumor at 28, it was a catastrophic event from which her entirely family has never recovered. To say that these deaths are equivalent doesn’t seem right to me, even though I agree we should do everything we can to preserve healthy lifespan for everyone, young and old.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  You were probably lucky in that your grandparents died a peaceful and expected death. When I lost my grandmother in her late 70s the day we were visiting for her birthday, to a sudden heart-attack, all my family could feel was the hollowness left behind by her absence, and thoughts of all the life events she would miss, things unsaid and so on.

umvi 6y ago

This covers both your and OP's questions pretty well: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm