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Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and cl

Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and climate change? If that's true, we have to entertain the theory that the virus was purposefully initiated by a time-traveler charged with averting climate catastrophe through the only means possible.

StreamBright 6y ago
Not really, there are very few climate related deaths. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-natural-disasters?time=earliest..2018 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-nat... I think more people die from diabetes and covid than climate.
- JimiofEden 6y ago
  There are CURRENTLY very few climate related deaths. The person you're responding to is wondering if more lives would be saved in the long run, maybe the next 1000 years.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The relative value of future deaths is interesting, right? To be honest you have to discount them a little because if you kill a guy today before he has kids, you've killed his kids too.
  - corty 6y ago
    If I refuse to mate with someone, I also killed a few thousand people over the next millenium. That doesn't mean I will loose any sleep over saying no to his proposition.
- savanaly 6y ago
  When it comes to short term deaths (like could be measured right now or in the coming years) I think the bigger mechanism would be pollution which causes deaths from people with respiratory illnesses and such in major cities. Not so much in the US (although LA is a problem I think?) but definitely in China and India.
- elmomle 6y ago
  It isn't only climate change. Ambient air pollution causes >4 million deaths per year, per the WHO: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
  - ggreer 6y ago
    Almost all of that (3.8 million) is indoor air pollution caused by cooking: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/household-air-pollution https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-detail...
    - elmomle 6y ago
      Actually, that 3.8 million is separate from the 4.2 million caused by outdoor air pollution: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
    - kube-system 6y ago
      For what it's worth, those cooking indoors with solid fuel are might also be less likely to be cooking anything... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_during_the_COVID...
remarkEon 6y ago
I've had this thought, but it's a thought experiment that I kinda don't want to go engage in. I've also been wondering if the death toll in the US is so high because, well, Americans are just really unhealthy and overweight and that increased morbidity in a way that was unique in the world. Non-compliance with stay-at-home and mask wearing obviously didn't help, but I can't shake the feeling that the structural problems with health in the US set us up for failure years (decades?) before the pandemic even started.
- fasteddie31003 6y ago
  I actually love uncomfortable thought experiments. My recent one I've been asking my friends is how many years of the current lockdown would you trade with getting the virus and all the issues that go along with that but then being over the lockdown. My number is 1 more year of the current lockdown. My girlfriend's is 3 years.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    To be clear, you're saying you would rather have one more year of lockdown than get the virus? And your girlfriend would rather have 3 years? For me, 0 - the reason I lockdown is out concern for others, I am not personally worried of the impact Covid would have on me.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      For my part, the reason I oppose the lockdowns is out of concern for others: by the time the restrictions are over in the EU, young people will have been prevented for about two years from doing all kinds of traditional coming of age rituals, courtship opportunities, etc. And if European countries isolating themselves leads to a new wave of nationalism and lessened cooperation with neighbors, it is their generation which will have to deal with the consequences. I am approaching middle age myself, but I don't think it is fair to limit the lives of people in their teens and twenties for a virus, the median age of death of which is around 80. This policy of COVID restrictions is the biggest betrayal of our youth since May ’68.
citilife 6y ago
> Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and climate change? Climate change wont directly lead to death, we'll have to adapt, but there are models showing more food produced from climate change. Simply put, we don't know what potentially will happen. We highly suspect there are 150 thousand increase in death from disease due to climate change[2] In contrast... there are 135 - 270 MILLION people on the verge of starvation now; due to the policies around covid (or >2% of the worlds population). > “marching towards starvation” spiking from 135 million to 270 million as the pandemic unfolded. He stressed that 2021 will be catastrophic [2] BTW these people are still getting covid too, lockdowns slowed the spread, didn't stop it. Most American's have already gotten the disease (estimates are that 10x the number of people have gotten it over the tests[3]). Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4]. [1] https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ [2] https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases-deaths-real-scale-estimates-charts-2020-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases-deaths-... [4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > but there are models showing more food produced from climate change. Total global food production hasn't been an issue in hunger in the modern era, so boosting it is immaterial in this context. Moving it out of existing populated places that are already marginal and have litle export industry to purchase imports with, OTOH, will be disastrous, even if Russia and Canada get a huge boost in arable land.
- xur17 6y ago
  > Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4] Considering there are 328 million Americans, that would mean 76% of Americans have had the disease, which I believe would be sufficient for herd immunity. Given what case counts look like, I find that extremely unlikely.
bpodgursky 6y ago
The Sars-cov-2 epidemic might easily kill more people in the developing world through food and economic insecurity than it kills from respiratory disease (esp given how young those countries are). I don't think this is a particularly realistic take.
blabus 6y ago
I’ve had a similar thought regarding the 2020 presidential election. Had Trump and his administration properly handled the pandemic response (or never had to handle it in the first place) it’s quite likely he would’ve been re-elected. After having seen the events that transpired over the past month (to say nothing of the past four years) I can’t help but wonder if 400,000+ lives ended up being the cost to preserve democracy in the US.
throwawayboise 6y ago
I would think if you've got the technology to time-travel, fixing the atmosphere in your present day would be trivial. Same reason the plot lines of The Terminator films never really made sense (though they were very entertaining movies).

StreamBright 6y ago

Not really, there are very few climate related deaths. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-natural-disasters?time=earliest..2018 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-nat... I think more people die from diabetes and covid than climate.

JimiofEden 6y ago
There are CURRENTLY very few climate related deaths. The person you're responding to is wondering if more lives would be saved in the long run, maybe the next 1000 years.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The relative value of future deaths is interesting, right? To be honest you have to discount them a little because if you kill a guy today before he has kids, you've killed his kids too.
- corty 6y ago
  If I refuse to mate with someone, I also killed a few thousand people over the next millenium. That doesn't mean I will loose any sleep over saying no to his proposition.
savanaly 6y ago
When it comes to short term deaths (like could be measured right now or in the coming years) I think the bigger mechanism would be pollution which causes deaths from people with respiratory illnesses and such in major cities. Not so much in the US (although LA is a problem I think?) but definitely in China and India.
elmomle 6y ago
It isn't only climate change. Ambient air pollution causes >4 million deaths per year, per the WHO: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
- ggreer 6y ago
  Almost all of that (3.8 million) is indoor air pollution caused by cooking: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/household-air-pollution https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-detail...
  - elmomle 6y ago
    Actually, that 3.8 million is separate from the 4.2 million caused by outdoor air pollution: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
  - kube-system 6y ago
    For what it's worth, those cooking indoors with solid fuel are might also be less likely to be cooking anything... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_during_the_COVID...

remarkEon 6y ago

I've had this thought, but it's a thought experiment that I kinda don't want to go engage in. I've also been wondering if the death toll in the US is so high because, well, Americans are just really unhealthy and overweight and that increased morbidity in a way that was unique in the world. Non-compliance with stay-at-home and mask wearing obviously didn't help, but I can't shake the feeling that the structural problems with health in the US set us up for failure years (decades?) before the pandemic even started.

fasteddie31003 6y ago
I actually love uncomfortable thought experiments. My recent one I've been asking my friends is how many years of the current lockdown would you trade with getting the virus and all the issues that go along with that but then being over the lockdown. My number is 1 more year of the current lockdown. My girlfriend's is 3 years.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  To be clear, you're saying you would rather have one more year of lockdown than get the virus? And your girlfriend would rather have 3 years? For me, 0 - the reason I lockdown is out concern for others, I am not personally worried of the impact Covid would have on me.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    For my part, the reason I oppose the lockdowns is out of concern for others: by the time the restrictions are over in the EU, young people will have been prevented for about two years from doing all kinds of traditional coming of age rituals, courtship opportunities, etc. And if European countries isolating themselves leads to a new wave of nationalism and lessened cooperation with neighbors, it is their generation which will have to deal with the consequences. I am approaching middle age myself, but I don't think it is fair to limit the lives of people in their teens and twenties for a virus, the median age of death of which is around 80. This policy of COVID restrictions is the biggest betrayal of our youth since May ’68.

citilife 6y ago

> Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and climate change? Climate change wont directly lead to death, we'll have to adapt, but there are models showing more food produced from climate change. Simply put, we don't know what potentially will happen. We highly suspect there are 150 thousand increase in death from disease due to climate change[2] In contrast... there are 135 - 270 MILLION people on the verge of starvation now; due to the policies around covid (or >2% of the worlds population). > “marching towards starvation” spiking from 135 million to 270 million as the pandemic unfolded. He stressed that 2021 will be catastrophic [2] BTW these people are still getting covid too, lockdowns slowed the spread, didn't stop it. Most American's have already gotten the disease (estimates are that 10x the number of people have gotten it over the tests[3]). Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4]. [1] https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ [2] https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases-deaths-real-scale-estimates-charts-2020-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases-deaths-... [4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

dragonwriter 6y ago
> but there are models showing more food produced from climate change. Total global food production hasn't been an issue in hunger in the modern era, so boosting it is immaterial in this context. Moving it out of existing populated places that are already marginal and have litle export industry to purchase imports with, OTOH, will be disastrous, even if Russia and Canada get a huge boost in arable land.
xur17 6y ago
> Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4] Considering there are 328 million Americans, that would mean 76% of Americans have had the disease, which I believe would be sufficient for herd immunity. Given what case counts look like, I find that extremely unlikely.

bpodgursky 6y ago

The Sars-cov-2 epidemic might easily kill more people in the developing world through food and economic insecurity than it kills from respiratory disease (esp given how young those countries are). I don't think this is a particularly realistic take.

blabus 6y ago

I’ve had a similar thought regarding the 2020 presidential election. Had Trump and his administration properly handled the pandemic response (or never had to handle it in the first place) it’s quite likely he would’ve been re-elected. After having seen the events that transpired over the past month (to say nothing of the past four years) I can’t help but wonder if 400,000+ lives ended up being the cost to preserve democracy in the US.

throwawayboise 6y ago

I would think if you've got the technology to time-travel, fixing the atmosphere in your present day would be trivial. Same reason the plot lines of The Terminator films never really made sense (though they were very entertaining movies).