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It’s incredibly easy to trade statistical deaths for statistical happiness. Ask yourself instead if you would be willing to kill yourself and your family if you

It’s incredibly easy to trade statistical deaths for statistical happiness. Ask yourself instead if you would be willing to kill yourself and your family if you knew it would make your neighbors happy. Sounds aggressive, I know. But it’s a solid way to illustrate that there are real people behind statistics. If 10x more people die, “everyone” is not going to have 2 years of a non-miserable life. The people who lose their spouses, parents, friends, children, etc will be horrifically miserable. It’s easy to trade lives when you assume you won’t be one of those people (or worse, one of the prematurely deceased).

kenneth 5y ago
Actually, I do trade the statistical risk of killing myself for some statistically greater benefit pretty much every single day and every action I take, from driving a car, to traveling for work, to any number of recreational activities like surfing or skiing. Your argument is the precise fallacy I'm arguing against — risks and benefits should be quantified and weighed. The fact that it takes 50 man-months of quarantine to avoid a single one-month earlier than expected death, to me, is absolutely not worth it. Perhaps you think locking up 50 innocent people to give someone an extra month is worth it. I don't. But I do understand that it's a subjective assessment.
- thebruce87m 5y ago
  “… each life cut short by 10 years on average” https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-potential-years-of-life-lost-to-covid-19 https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-...
  - kenneth 5y ago
    Yes, lock up 6000 people for one month to save one life that had 10 years left. Still not worth it to me.
    - thebruce87m 5y ago
      Ok, how many years would be worth it?
      - dent9876543 5y ago
        Logically it has to be 600, no? Which makes no sense. But doesn’t it place a reasonable scale upon what a trade might look like.
Dwelve 5y ago
Comparing a virus that has an average age of death at or even above life expectancy with a suicide shows how weak your point actually is. Let's turn it around shall we? We can reduce the amount of deaths from car accidents by 1000 fold if we limit the speed of all vehicles to 10mph. Should we do it or not? Ask yourself if you would be willing to kill yourself and 999 close members of your family if you knew it would make your taxi driver be able to drive a little faster. If the virus was as deadly as people pretended it was we wouldn't NEED lockdowns or any government measures at all. People would stay at home by themselves. Instead I see people going shopping 3 times a week. People are simply unwilling to admit they were wrong and bought into an unwarranted hysteria. The sooner they admit this the sooner this farce can end. The flu is more dangerous to most people in here, so let's react proportionally to what we did for the flu every year

kenneth 5y ago

Actually, I do trade the statistical risk of killing myself for some statistically greater benefit pretty much every single day and every action I take, from driving a car, to traveling for work, to any number of recreational activities like surfing or skiing. Your argument is the precise fallacy I'm arguing against — risks and benefits should be quantified and weighed. The fact that it takes 50 man-months of quarantine to avoid a single one-month earlier than expected death, to me, is absolutely not worth it. Perhaps you think locking up 50 innocent people to give someone an extra month is worth it. I don't. But I do understand that it's a subjective assessment.

thebruce87m 5y ago
“… each life cut short by 10 years on average” https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-potential-years-of-life-lost-to-covid-19 https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-...
- kenneth 5y ago
  Yes, lock up 6000 people for one month to save one life that had 10 years left. Still not worth it to me.
  - thebruce87m 5y ago
    Ok, how many years would be worth it?
    - dent9876543 5y ago
      Logically it has to be 600, no? Which makes no sense. But doesn’t it place a reasonable scale upon what a trade might look like.

Dwelve 5y ago

Comparing a virus that has an average age of death at or even above life expectancy with a suicide shows how weak your point actually is. Let's turn it around shall we? We can reduce the amount of deaths from car accidents by 1000 fold if we limit the speed of all vehicles to 10mph. Should we do it or not? Ask yourself if you would be willing to kill yourself and 999 close members of your family if you knew it would make your taxi driver be able to drive a little faster. If the virus was as deadly as people pretended it was we wouldn't NEED lockdowns or any government measures at all. People would stay at home by themselves. Instead I see people going shopping 3 times a week. People are simply unwilling to admit they were wrong and bought into an unwarranted hysteria. The sooner they admit this the sooner this farce can end. The flu is more dangerous to most people in here, so let's react proportionally to what we did for the flu every year