5 ms·

Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. Also, as a vaccinated New Zealander who after spending 5 m

Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. Also, as a vaccinated New Zealander who after spending 5 months at home is now traveling again, I can assure you people there are happy and mostly oblivious to what has gone on overseas. The travel restrictions whilst draconian, aren’t absolute and are being eased when needed. The travel bubble with Australia being a good example of this.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Sounds worse than many places, ie Switzerland which is completely landlocked with diverse neighbors and open borders. Very few travel restrictions, mostly in spring 2020, just do your part and do the right choices in ie hygiene and travel destinations.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Switzerland has had just under 11,000 people die, NZ 26 (twenty-six). Not to mention, NZ had complete lockdown for all of two months. The rest of the time peoples daily lives were unchanged. No masks (generally), concerts with 10,000+ people no problem. Summer holidays etc etc.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    New Zealand was exceptionally successful, and other areas which tried that strategy weren't so lucky. Some parts of Australia were shut down for something like 9 of the past 18 months. (Sydney is under lockdown orders today!) And I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of lockdowns in France, Spain, or Italy - their lockdowns just didn't fully eliminate transition, so we put them in the "weak lockdown" bucket, even though as a matter of government policy they were doing the same thing.
umanwizard 5y ago
> Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. How so? The first result I could find[1] estimates that life expectancy decreased by 1.18 years in the US due to the pandemic, which doesn't strike me as extreme. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118
- adrianN 5y ago
  That's 1.18 years despite all the countermeasures the US has implemented.
- bena 5y ago
  Are you aware how hard it is to move the needle by any significant percentage when you are dealing with sets of millions? Life expectancy is essentially an average of when people die. Not to mention life expectancy was going up. So it not only stopped whatever gains we had, but reversed it by a substantial amount. We were expected to gain 2 years from 2017 to 2030. That's 13 years to go up 2 years. About 2.8 million people die in the US each year. The current life expectancy is about 80 years. To make that 80 become 78.8 is the equivalent of 1.5% of the people or 42,000 babies dying as soon as they were born. Anything that can move the needle that much in such a short time is pretty extreme.
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    Yea, statistics can make a case for anything. Life expectancy went down, but the average age of a covid death was 82 years old, meaning half were older than 82. These octogenarians and older are pulling the average life expectancy up every year they continue living. It would be a way different story to have the average life expectancy go down because a bunch of, say, 20 year olds died.
    - bena 5y ago
      Yes, old people living longer pulls up the average life expectancy. That's how it works. And that's been happening every year by a little bit every year (about 0.15 years). Until this year. When it decreased by 0.1/year for three years in a row, it was a big deal. Having it drop by 1.2 in just a single year is effectively astronomical. It is a significant event.
      - sjwalter 5y ago
        It depends on how it drops by 1.2 If all you care about is the numbers, then a drop of 1.2 is a horrible terrible outcome and we should all recoil in horror, no matter how it happens. To me and almost every other human, having a bunch of 80 year olds die, losing out on say, 1-5 quality-adjusted years of life, is not great, but it is nowhere near a tragedy. Having a bunch of young healthy people with say 50-70 quality-adjusted years of life left, is an absolute horrific nightmarish cosmic-scale terrible outcome. But to you, it's 1.2 either way.

saiya-jin 5y ago

Sounds worse than many places, ie Switzerland which is completely landlocked with diverse neighbors and open borders. Very few travel restrictions, mostly in spring 2020, just do your part and do the right choices in ie hygiene and travel destinations.

aunty_helen 5y ago
Switzerland has had just under 11,000 people die, NZ 26 (twenty-six). Not to mention, NZ had complete lockdown for all of two months. The rest of the time peoples daily lives were unchanged. No masks (generally), concerts with 10,000+ people no problem. Summer holidays etc etc.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  New Zealand was exceptionally successful, and other areas which tried that strategy weren't so lucky. Some parts of Australia were shut down for something like 9 of the past 18 months. (Sydney is under lockdown orders today!) And I think it's hard to find fault with the strength of lockdowns in France, Spain, or Italy - their lockdowns just didn't fully eliminate transition, so we put them in the "weak lockdown" bucket, even though as a matter of government policy they were doing the same thing.

umanwizard 5y ago

> Describing the covid pandemic as simply a small decrease in life expectancy is a little on the nose. How so? The first result I could find[1] estimates that life expectancy decreased by 1.18 years in the US due to the pandemic, which doesn't strike me as extreme. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2014746118

adrianN 5y ago
That's 1.18 years despite all the countermeasures the US has implemented.
bena 5y ago
Are you aware how hard it is to move the needle by any significant percentage when you are dealing with sets of millions? Life expectancy is essentially an average of when people die. Not to mention life expectancy was going up. So it not only stopped whatever gains we had, but reversed it by a substantial amount. We were expected to gain 2 years from 2017 to 2030. That's 13 years to go up 2 years. About 2.8 million people die in the US each year. The current life expectancy is about 80 years. To make that 80 become 78.8 is the equivalent of 1.5% of the people or 42,000 babies dying as soon as they were born. Anything that can move the needle that much in such a short time is pretty extreme.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  Yea, statistics can make a case for anything. Life expectancy went down, but the average age of a covid death was 82 years old, meaning half were older than 82. These octogenarians and older are pulling the average life expectancy up every year they continue living. It would be a way different story to have the average life expectancy go down because a bunch of, say, 20 year olds died.
  - bena 5y ago
    Yes, old people living longer pulls up the average life expectancy. That's how it works. And that's been happening every year by a little bit every year (about 0.15 years). Until this year. When it decreased by 0.1/year for three years in a row, it was a big deal. Having it drop by 1.2 in just a single year is effectively astronomical. It is a significant event.
    - sjwalter 5y ago
      It depends on how it drops by 1.2 If all you care about is the numbers, then a drop of 1.2 is a horrible terrible outcome and we should all recoil in horror, no matter how it happens. To me and almost every other human, having a bunch of 80 year olds die, losing out on say, 1-5 quality-adjusted years of life, is not great, but it is nowhere near a tragedy. Having a bunch of young healthy people with say 50-70 quality-adjusted years of life left, is an absolute horrific nightmarish cosmic-scale terrible outcome. But to you, it's 1.2 either way.