4 ms·

It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly, at the expense of quality of life for a younger generation, versus the op

by lumb63 5y ago

It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly, at the expense of quality of life for a younger generation, versus the opposite. The effects are, as you said, probably not measurable, and so the calculus is near-impossible. However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to "stop covid" at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus. In my opinion, the vast majority of the world lost its cool in the pandemic, and in our panic, we may have made mistakes. Or maybe not. The long term results remain to be seen. Certainly, however, we as a society did not act with a level head and think things through rationally before acting.

hotpotamus 5y ago
When you try to mix human morbidity and mortality with market economics, basically you just piss everyone off. I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece? And how much money are you willing to pay to extend the life of any of these people. We are hesitant to ask these questions for good reason.
- babyshake 5y ago
  Same problem occurs when it comes to socialized healthcare, or just healthcare in general.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  The government already has these answers. There is a value assigned to life per year it could be extended. For some reason that was thrown out the window for covid.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    Where do they publish the numbers? I'm curious what I'm worth.
    - 317070 5y ago
      In the UK, this might be a good place to start: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risk... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly/a-scoping-study-on-the-valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-the-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risk... tl;dr, if memory serves correctly, it's about 60k GBP per full health year left. So 2 years at 50% health is 1 full health year, with formulas to tell you what 50% health means exactly. I don't know of other countries that make this calculation so explicitly.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      Google for SVM statistical value of human life. If I recall correctly.
- CWuestefeld 5y ago
  As the song goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". The fact that we've steadfastly refused to verbalize the implicit choices that have been made doesn't change anything about what was actually done.
  - babyshake 5y ago
    This also applies to the workplace. Good management involves understanding that even the lack of a choice is a choice.
- makomk 5y ago
  The NHS in the UK - whose low, low costs certain US political activists point to as proof public healthcare is not just better but cheaper - literally does this. There's a fixed amount they're willing to spend per expected year of healthy life saved, adjusted for quality of life during that time, and treatments that are expected to cost more than that aren't available on the NHS. This is surprisingly uncontroversial, possibly because the NHS as an institution is basically beyond questioning. However, the same reasoning was not applied in the UK over Covid; the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    Yes, any public healthcare system will obviously make these calculations. Private insurers also do this in the US however they are more limited in what they can do to control costs. I suspect that because there is one universal system, people accept that they're all more or less bound by the same rules (I'm aware there is private care in the UK too), whereas in the US it can be pretty arbitrary as to who gets healthcare; obviously money helps but there are multiple single payer systems (lol) that some belong to also.
  - david38 5y ago
    This is the way. Hand waving morality and preciousness of life leads to a very few getting all the treatment. (The first part)
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      We could easily afford preserving as many people's lives as possible in this situation. > preciousness of life Let's not belittle it; it is indeed extremely precious.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    > the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it. This poses a false dichotomy between strict lockdowns and economic growth. The UK had both bad death rates and a bad economic hit compared to other countries in europe. I think the conservatives tried to balance the short-term interests of the economy against case numbers, and ultimately ended up muddling about in the middle, which was why they ended up with the worst of both worlds. The countries that did really well in the pandemic (east asian countries) typically went for what seemed like drastic measures in the early stages. As time went on, it's become apparent that their liberties, economies, and also case numbers were all far less impacted by the pandemic compared to western countries that had to go into emergency lockdowns as case counts soared out of control. Even in the limited context of western europe, one of the reasons why the UK had so many days in lockdown (more than France or Germany, often with more stringent rules, iirc) was because they prevaricated so much about bringing in lockdowns, then had to make them much tighter to compensate.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  >I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece? That's an incredibly easy one, if I had kids it would be my kids over my parents, and I'm certain my parents would agree and be willing to sacrifice themselves to save their grandkids if it truly came to that. The fact that this apparently isn't the default moral calculus for most people (as shown by the pandemic response) is deeply troubling to me.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Also an extremely easy answer for me to choose the future over the past. There was no reason my grandpa should have been getting dialysis paid for by taxpayers at the age of 93. For years. Give him access to assisted suicide and invest that money into the nation’s children. And while it is probably easier to talk the talk than walk the walk, I do not want a dime spent on me once I am chronically unable to do simple tasks myself. If I need 24/7 care, then I like to think I will opt to take myself out.
    - hotpotamus 5y ago
      See this is where the hypotheticals go. Let's say your grandpa doesn't want to do the assisted suicide thing. Are you willing to "withdraw care" (the medical term for when doctors kill people on purpose) or even take more active measures? I know the arithmetic is pretty obvious but as you say walking the walk is something different entirely.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        If the question is would I want a significant share of society’s resources to not go towards extending the life of a 93 year old, then my answer is no. Of course, I would not want society to force anyone to accept assisted suicide (which would not really be suicide).
        hotpotamus 5y ago
        Ok, what if we tell the grandparent that we'll take half of their expected costs for care and give that to their grandchildren's college funds if they go through with the suicide? Is that an acceptable compromise or horrible dystopian bargain? Basically it's the trolley problem in that there are endless hypotheticals you can construct to determine your values, but as I said it can get pretty distasteful.
phkahler 5y ago
>> However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to "stop covid" at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus. Stop Covid at all costs is what they said, but not what they did. HCQ was shot down without investigation even as doctors were reporting success. Most things were simply shot down as "not an FDA approved treatment for covid19" even though there were no such treatments for the first year. I had covid so my immunity is better than the vaccinated, but I was still supposed to get vaxed because it helps a bit more and we needed to do everything possible. OK vitamins D was thought to help and has since been proven to help, so why are there not ads pushing that? It's never been about doing (certainly not trying) everything possible. Its always been "do as I say" from the government.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  I have to agree. As I walked around a local strip mall with closed gyms, closed stores, but open nail salons I realized the whole precautions nature was doomed. Sure seems like an attempt to maximize theater and sell vaccines
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  This bullshit, again? Far too much was wasted on studies to mollify the HC@ crowd. For vitamin d, there’s no definite answer, but it helps either not at all or too little to be worth it: https://inews.co.uk/news/vitamin-d-supplements-do-not-stop-you-catching-covid-or-reduce-symptoms-major-trial-reveals-1536673 https://inews.co.uk/news/vitamin-d-supplements-do-not-stop-y...
  - nradov 5y ago
    There is a very clear correlation between hypovitaminosis D and severe COVID-19 symptoms. Recommend you read all of the studies indexed on the page. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/ https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
    - phkahler 5y ago
bigDinosaur 5y ago
We absolutely made mistakes - but it'll take decades before there's any consensus on what exactly they were. On a more personal level I can confidently say that the pandemic has caused many (although still a minority) to go insane - in the literal sense of disconnected from reality. This ranges from treating the pandemic as if it's still incredibly deadly to completely denying there was ever a problem. The consequences of that I'll be dealing with personally for a long, long time.
wolverine876 5y ago
> It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly ... Human beings have rights, including and especially to life, regardless of the costs to you. The question is, how do we preserve as many lives as possible, and then at the least possible cost.
- nradov 5y ago
  No that's not how it works. There is no such thing as a right to life. Others are not required to keep your alive.
  - bighoss97 5y ago
    If there is no right to life then there are no rights whatsoever. Last I checked most countries uphold a right to life for their citizens.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    You might check out the various voter-approved lists of rights
oceanplexian 5y ago
Hopefully history remembers that there actually were people who acted with a cool head, among them: Sweden, Japan, Africa, and large swaths of the USA. Now we have a pretty good control group to assess the effectiveness of measures like school closures, social isolation, cloth masks, and lockdowns. I suspect that some people are in for a bit of cognitive dissonance, if it does come to light that said measures were not actually based in science and had an overall negative impact on society.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Sweden? This Sweden? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5#Sec3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5#Sec3 "During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, we try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions." "Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives."
pjc50 5y ago
> "stop covid" at all costs Hardly anywhere seriously tried this. New Zealand probably came closest. It seems that far too many people in this thread are arguing that the total number of COVID deaths - 980k in the US - is effectively too low? As a result of excessive caution? Are you sure about that?
- kaesar14 5y ago
  China? Japan? As in two countries who together make up almost a quarter of the world’s population?
robbedpeter 5y ago
Many of the protocols mandated had minor or no impact on the spread of the disease, but inflicted horrendous pain and suffering on people. Policies that locked down nursing homes, for example, preventing family from attending to their loved ones in their last moments of life, or allowing nurses to attend covid positive patients and the vulnerable uninfected simultaneously, and many other practices by the dodgier health care facilities made the lockdowns a nasty and dehumanizing exercise of power with no basis in rationality. Shutting down small businesses, allowing oil companies to take in obscene profits and increasing their subsidies because you can sell a "people are driving less" narrative, and toying with a ludicrously dangerous profit incentive for public health by making the vaccines legal without liability or recourse for injury. It turned out relatively OK, but almost everything done in the name of public health had ulterior motives behind it, or a mad scramble to cover up incompetence or graft. There are lots of lessons to be learned.

by lumb63 5y ago

hotpotamus 5y ago

When you try to mix human morbidity and mortality with market economics, basically you just piss everyone off. I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece? And how much money are you willing to pay to extend the life of any of these people. We are hesitant to ask these questions for good reason.

babyshake 5y ago
Same problem occurs when it comes to socialized healthcare, or just healthcare in general.
Gigachad 5y ago
The government already has these answers. There is a value assigned to life per year it could be extended. For some reason that was thrown out the window for covid.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Where do they publish the numbers? I'm curious what I'm worth.
  - 317070 5y ago
    In the UK, this might be a good place to start: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risk... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly/a-scoping-study-on-the-valuation-of-risks-to-life-and-health-the-monetary-value-of-a-life-year-voly https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuation-of-risk... tl;dr, if memory serves correctly, it's about 60k GBP per full health year left. So 2 years at 50% health is 1 full health year, with formulas to tell you what 50% health means exactly. I don't know of other countries that make this calculation so explicitly.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    Google for SVM statistical value of human life. If I recall correctly.
CWuestefeld 5y ago
As the song goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". The fact that we've steadfastly refused to verbalize the implicit choices that have been made doesn't change anything about what was actually done.
- babyshake 5y ago
  This also applies to the workplace. Good management involves understanding that even the lack of a choice is a choice.
makomk 5y ago
The NHS in the UK - whose low, low costs certain US political activists point to as proof public healthcare is not just better but cheaper - literally does this. There's a fixed amount they're willing to spend per expected year of healthy life saved, adjusted for quality of life during that time, and treatments that are expected to cost more than that aren't available on the NHS. This is surprisingly uncontroversial, possibly because the NHS as an institution is basically beyond questioning. However, the same reasoning was not applied in the UK over Covid; the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Yes, any public healthcare system will obviously make these calculations. Private insurers also do this in the US however they are more limited in what they can do to control costs. I suspect that because there is one universal system, people accept that they're all more or less bound by the same rules (I'm aware there is private care in the UK too), whereas in the US it can be pretty arbitrary as to who gets healthcare; obviously money helps but there are multiple single payer systems (lol) that some belong to also.
- david38 5y ago
  This is the way. Hand waving morality and preciousness of life leads to a very few getting all the treatment. (The first part)
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    We could easily afford preserving as many people's lives as possible in this situation. > preciousness of life Let's not belittle it; it is indeed extremely precious.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  > the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it. This poses a false dichotomy between strict lockdowns and economic growth. The UK had both bad death rates and a bad economic hit compared to other countries in europe. I think the conservatives tried to balance the short-term interests of the economy against case numbers, and ultimately ended up muddling about in the middle, which was why they ended up with the worst of both worlds. The countries that did really well in the pandemic (east asian countries) typically went for what seemed like drastic measures in the early stages. As time went on, it's become apparent that their liberties, economies, and also case numbers were all far less impacted by the pandemic compared to western countries that had to go into emergency lockdowns as case counts soared out of control. Even in the limited context of western europe, one of the reasons why the UK had so many days in lockdown (more than France or Germany, often with more stringent rules, iirc) was because they prevaricated so much about bringing in lockdowns, then had to make them much tighter to compensate.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece? That's an incredibly easy one, if I had kids it would be my kids over my parents, and I'm certain my parents would agree and be willing to sacrifice themselves to save their grandkids if it truly came to that. The fact that this apparently isn't the default moral calculus for most people (as shown by the pandemic response) is deeply troubling to me.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Also an extremely easy answer for me to choose the future over the past. There was no reason my grandpa should have been getting dialysis paid for by taxpayers at the age of 93. For years. Give him access to assisted suicide and invest that money into the nation’s children. And while it is probably easier to talk the talk than walk the walk, I do not want a dime spent on me once I am chronically unable to do simple tasks myself. If I need 24/7 care, then I like to think I will opt to take myself out.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    See this is where the hypotheticals go. Let's say your grandpa doesn't want to do the assisted suicide thing. Are you willing to "withdraw care" (the medical term for when doctors kill people on purpose) or even take more active measures? I know the arithmetic is pretty obvious but as you say walking the walk is something different entirely.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      If the question is would I want a significant share of society’s resources to not go towards extending the life of a 93 year old, then my answer is no. Of course, I would not want society to force anyone to accept assisted suicide (which would not really be suicide).
      - hotpotamus 5y ago
        Ok, what if we tell the grandparent that we'll take half of their expected costs for care and give that to their grandchildren's college funds if they go through with the suicide? Is that an acceptable compromise or horrible dystopian bargain? Basically it's the trolley problem in that there are endless hypotheticals you can construct to determine your values, but as I said it can get pretty distasteful.

phkahler 5y ago

>> However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to "stop covid" at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus. Stop Covid at all costs is what they said, but not what they did. HCQ was shot down without investigation even as doctors were reporting success. Most things were simply shot down as "not an FDA approved treatment for covid19" even though there were no such treatments for the first year. I had covid so my immunity is better than the vaccinated, but I was still supposed to get vaxed because it helps a bit more and we needed to do everything possible. OK vitamins D was thought to help and has since been proven to help, so why are there not ads pushing that? It's never been about doing (certainly not trying) everything possible. Its always been "do as I say" from the government.

GenerocUsername 5y ago
I have to agree. As I walked around a local strip mall with closed gyms, closed stores, but open nail salons I realized the whole precautions nature was doomed. Sure seems like an attempt to maximize theater and sell vaccines
KarlKemp 5y ago
This bullshit, again? Far too much was wasted on studies to mollify the HC@ crowd. For vitamin d, there’s no definite answer, but it helps either not at all or too little to be worth it: https://inews.co.uk/news/vitamin-d-supplements-do-not-stop-you-catching-covid-or-reduce-symptoms-major-trial-reveals-1536673 https://inews.co.uk/news/vitamin-d-supplements-do-not-stop-y...
- nradov 5y ago
  There is a very clear correlation between hypovitaminosis D and severe COVID-19 symptoms. Recommend you read all of the studies indexed on the page. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/ https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
  - phkahler 5y ago

bigDinosaur 5y ago

We absolutely made mistakes - but it'll take decades before there's any consensus on what exactly they were. On a more personal level I can confidently say that the pandemic has caused many (although still a minority) to go insane - in the literal sense of disconnected from reality. This ranges from treating the pandemic as if it's still incredibly deadly to completely denying there was ever a problem. The consequences of that I'll be dealing with personally for a long, long time.

wolverine876 5y ago

> It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly ... Human beings have rights, including and especially to life, regardless of the costs to you. The question is, how do we preserve as many lives as possible, and then at the least possible cost.

nradov 5y ago
No that's not how it works. There is no such thing as a right to life. Others are not required to keep your alive.
- bighoss97 5y ago
  If there is no right to life then there are no rights whatsoever. Last I checked most countries uphold a right to life for their citizens.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  You might check out the various voter-approved lists of rights

oceanplexian 5y ago

Hopefully history remembers that there actually were people who acted with a cool head, among them: Sweden, Japan, Africa, and large swaths of the USA. Now we have a pretty good control group to assess the effectiveness of measures like school closures, social isolation, cloth masks, and lockdowns. I suspect that some people are in for a bit of cognitive dissonance, if it does come to light that said measures were not actually based in science and had an overall negative impact on society.

pjc50 5y ago
Sweden? This Sweden? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5#Sec3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5#Sec3 "During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, we try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions." "Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives."

pjc50 5y ago

> "stop covid" at all costs Hardly anywhere seriously tried this. New Zealand probably came closest. It seems that far too many people in this thread are arguing that the total number of COVID deaths - 980k in the US - is effectively too low? As a result of excessive caution? Are you sure about that?

kaesar14 5y ago
China? Japan? As in two countries who together make up almost a quarter of the world’s population?

robbedpeter 5y ago

Many of the protocols mandated had minor or no impact on the spread of the disease, but inflicted horrendous pain and suffering on people. Policies that locked down nursing homes, for example, preventing family from attending to their loved ones in their last moments of life, or allowing nurses to attend covid positive patients and the vulnerable uninfected simultaneously, and many other practices by the dodgier health care facilities made the lockdowns a nasty and dehumanizing exercise of power with no basis in rationality. Shutting down small businesses, allowing oil companies to take in obscene profits and increasing their subsidies because you can sell a "people are driving less" narrative, and toying with a ludicrously dangerous profit incentive for public health by making the vaccines legal without liability or recourse for injury. It turned out relatively OK, but almost everything done in the name of public health had ulterior motives behind it, or a mad scramble to cover up incompetence or graft. There are lots of lessons to be learned.