5 ms·
We're not even squarely on the other side of Covid yet, and I'm already sick and tired of the "worse than Covid" trope.
by gyulai 5y ago
We're not even squarely on the other side of Covid yet, and I'm already sick and tired of the "worse than Covid" trope.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rosndo 5y agoIt’s a very reasonable comparison though. Billions of man-years have been ruined by the COVID fearmongers. It’s perfectly reasonable the much scarier stuff we aren’t panicking about.
- gjulianm 5y agoI am not sure how many man-years would have been lost if nobody had done anything regarding COVID.
- gyulai 5y agoWe will never know since we can't measure the magnitude of an outcome that never happened. Adverse effects from fearmongering, however, did happen.
- gjulianm 5y agoBut we know what happened even with actions taken. In my city all hospitals were saturated, there were so many dead people that the army had to help and move corpses to an old ice rink. And that was stopped only by a full lockdown. I don't need to measure the exact magnitude to know that without taking any measures, it would have been terrible.
- rosndo 5y agoJust because your city isn’t equipped to deal with an unusually high amount of deaths in a pretty way does not mean that the lockdowns saved more quality adjusted life years than they cost. A year of life is worth far more when you’re 20 than when you’re 80. If the people saved by lockdowns were primarily old people with a few years left to live it would be pretty clear that the lockdowns were a net negative.
- gjulianm 5y ago> Just because your city isn’t equipped to deal with an unusually high amount of deaths Nowhere in the world was equipped to deal with the incredibly high amount of deaths that happened, nor with the incredibly high amount of sick people. > does not mean that the lockdowns saved more quality adjusted life years than they cost. Yes, because the death of loved ones, the sickness and long-term effects of COVID, the collapse of healthcare, the sick leaves of work and the self-imposed quarantines would not have had any effect in quality-adjusted life years. It's incredibly naive to think that life would have continued as usual without lockdowns. I mean, most people were going to go on lockdown regardless. We all knew people getting sick, going to hospitals and not being able to receive care, family members and friends dying... It wasn't fear-mongering, it was a genuinely scary experience. I don't know if you lived in places that suffered the worst of the pandemic or not, but it definitely doesn't sound like it. > A year of life is worth far more when you’re 20 than when you’re 80. A month of lockdown is worse than an 80 year old (who otherwise might live some years) suffocating to death alone in a hospital?
- rosndo 5y ago> It's incredibly naive to think that life would have continued as usual without lockdowns. What a truly bizarre strawman. > A month of lockdown is worse than an 80 year old (who otherwise might live some years) suffocating to death alone in a hospital? You are very lucky if you got away with just a month of lockdowns. It might not seem that way, but this is actually a simple mathematical problem. How many young healthy people traded in a month of the best years of their life in order to extend the life of that 80yo?
- gjulianm 5y agoYou can’t seriously tell me that I’m making a bizarre strawman argument and then proceed to repeat the exact thing I’m criticizing. It’s not “simple math”. Lockdowns weren’t just to “extend life of a few 80 yo”, even though I personally think it was a worthy “trade”. What do you think would have happened without lockdowns? How many months of “the best years of their lives” would young healthy people have lost to self-imposed isolation, sickness and loss?
- sofixa 5y agoSweden didn't do lockdowns, and suffered the same adverse effects but with multiple times the deaths of their neighbours.
- rosndo 5y agoIf they didn’t do lockdowns, how could they have suffered the same adverse effects?
- sofixa 5y agoBecause the adverse effects came from the pandemic, and lockdowns were merely a mitigating tactic with similar adverse effects. When people are sick, they'll stay home, not work and isolate, lockdown or no lockdown.
- MattRix 5y agoThis logic is so clearly flawed. It’s much too easy to say we overreacted to Covid while pointing at death numbers that are much lower precisely because of the “fearmongering” measures that were taken. I’ve seen anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy members make this mistake quite often recently.
- rosndo 5y ago>This logic is so clearly flawed. I think you are imagining an argument that nobody here is making. > I’ve seen anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy members make this mistake quite often recently. Ah, yep. What possible good could come out of you bringing up these groups? Why would you bring up discredited extremist points of view in this conversation? Are you trying to attack my character by implying that I might be associated with those idiots?
- MattRix 5y agoYes, words matter. By intentionally using loaded words like “ruined” and “fearmongering”, I think you know exactly what message you’re trying to send.
- rosndo 5y agoBoth accurately describe the situation.
- MattRix 5y agoObviously I disagree, and I find it strange that you tried so hard to distance yourself from anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy members in your earlier comment when it seems clear that you agree with them.
- rosndo 5y agoI don’t agree with them. Vaccines are good, vaccine mandates I don’t care about as long as the vaccines are readily available. Why are you trying to project these extremist points of view onto me?