> Trading the lives and senses of anyone to watch numbers go up in a spreadsheet is despicable. Yet this is what we all do every day, from traffic to food safe

> Trading the lives and senses of anyone to watch numbers go up in a spreadsheet is despicable. Yet this is what we all do every day, from traffic to food safety, to public spending on health care, etc. These sort of trade-offs exist everywhere. Every single time you take a flight or step in a car you are literally contributing to the death of people. None of this is hugely controversial, except ... in the case of COVID. And it's not about "numbers", during great economic recessions quality of life does decline, sometimes greatly so. IMHO "destroy the economy", "destroy the lives of children", etc. is hugely overstating matters, but it did have a negative impact on many aspects. Were lockdowns a good or bad trade-off? You can reasonably disagree on that. But to deny the trade-off exists in the first place is unhelpful.