4 ms·

If diet related illnesses were unknown before COVID they'd have had an even more dramatic impact on those numbers. We've not only decided that's an "acceptable

by avar 5y ago

If diet related illnesses were unknown before COVID they'd have had an even more dramatic impact on those numbers. We've not only decided that's an "acceptable steady state", but actively embraced it. > Life expectancy in the US dropped by a year in 2020. In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Do you think the average person in 1970 would have accepted 10x the invasiveness of the measures we've had for the last couple of years to reach parity, or were they just used to the "normal"? You can argue that we should or shouldn't do something, but claiming that human beings aren't fine with perpetually dealing with this level of risk is rather absurd.

Izkata 5y ago
> In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Another way of putting it: We're back to where we were as recently as 2007.
- avar 5y ago
  Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austria, France, South Korea and Japan? Those countries have (respectively) around 1-6 additional years of life expectancy compared to the US[1]. Or, to put it another way: Life expectancy peaked in the US in 2014[2], while it kept rising in most peer countries. That certainly made the news, and something was being done about the root causes of that, but by and large it was being ignored politically. Again, none of this is an argument for or against any particular COVID measures. I'm just pointing out that it's a particularly egregious case of historical blinders & end-of-history thinking to think that human beings as a species can't get used to the relatively small (in a historical context) rise in risk the world has seen in the last couple of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... 2. https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peaked-in-2014/ https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peak...
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    Your reasoning is unsound. We spent massive amounts of GDP to only have roughly a million people die of this disease over the last two years. It could have been much worse if we hadn’t done as much a we had. World war 2 lowered life expectancy by 3 years. Is 1.5 ok for COVID?
jupp0r 5y ago
> We've not only decided that's an "acceptable steady state", but actively embraced it. I’m not sure what you mean by that but nobody I know thinks it’s perfectly fine to have half a million people per year die unnecessarily. > claiming that human beings aren't fine with perpetually dealing with this level of risk is rather absurd People are dealing with those risks all the time. About ~90% of people were voluntarily wearing mask when I went grocery shopping earlier today. People had their seat belts on on the roads there. Their kids were in child seats even though it’s quite inconvenient to put them in there. We do lots of things to mitigate risks. Some of them are pure theater (letting the pilot go through airport security), others are really effective (having a co pilot in the cockpit).

by avar 5y ago

Izkata 5y ago

> In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Another way of putting it: We're back to where we were as recently as 2007.

avar 5y ago
Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austria, France, South Korea and Japan? Those countries have (respectively) around 1-6 additional years of life expectancy compared to the US[1]. Or, to put it another way: Life expectancy peaked in the US in 2014[2], while it kept rising in most peer countries. That certainly made the news, and something was being done about the root causes of that, but by and large it was being ignored politically. Again, none of this is an argument for or against any particular COVID measures. I'm just pointing out that it's a particularly egregious case of historical blinders & end-of-history thinking to think that human beings as a species can't get used to the relatively small (in a historical context) rise in risk the world has seen in the last couple of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... 2. https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peaked-in-2014/ https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peak...
- jupp0r 5y ago
  Your reasoning is unsound. We spent massive amounts of GDP to only have roughly a million people die of this disease over the last two years. It could have been much worse if we hadn’t done as much a we had. World war 2 lowered life expectancy by 3 years. Is 1.5 ok for COVID?

jupp0r 5y ago

> We've not only decided that's an "acceptable steady state", but actively embraced it. I’m not sure what you mean by that but nobody I know thinks it’s perfectly fine to have half a million people per year die unnecessarily. > claiming that human beings aren't fine with perpetually dealing with this level of risk is rather absurd People are dealing with those risks all the time. About ~90% of people were voluntarily wearing mask when I went grocery shopping earlier today. People had their seat belts on on the roads there. Their kids were in child seats even though it’s quite inconvenient to put them in there. We do lots of things to mitigate risks. Some of them are pure theater (letting the pilot go through airport security), others are really effective (having a co pilot in the cockpit).