Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
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Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
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Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#2Some good points, although I'd toss another thought into the mix. The confinements and shutdowns and shelter in place orders also cost lives.
We know that recessions cost lives. One study (published in The Lancet, so worth taking a second look at) suggested 500k excess cancer deaths from the global financial crisis[1], and another study (published in the BMJ) suggested that excess suicides in 2009 alone across the US and 53 other countries totalled some 5k[2]. I don't know of a single comprehensive effort, but we know recessions reduce the resources available at the margins for food, medicine and shelter, and increase the suicide rate. The net effect for something like the GFC seems likely to be on the order of tens of thousands of deaths (and perhaps significantly higher), and the recession caused in part by Covid-19 and in part by our reaction to Covid-19 seems to be within an order of magnitude of the GFC.
Thus, it seems fairly obvious that at least some responses to Covid-19 would cost more lives than they saved. If you're evaluating a measure that, let's say, would save X lives from Covid-19, but would cause the resulting recession to go from, Y% as bad as the GFC to Z% as bad as the GFC, there are absolutely values for X, Y and Z which would make the measure net negative on lives.
I'd be happier if that tradeoff got acknowledged a bit more often, even in a perfunctory "well, we're clearly MILES away from the break even point, so let's ignore it" sort of way. If you pretend that tradeoffs don't exist, you're unlikely to reach an optimal decision.
[1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis...
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#3Something that seems not to be considered by many observers is that if a disease is not eliminated, it will continuously either claim lives or reduce efficiency (which claims lives).
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#4C2 are really fun to drive if you are at the wheel, but the back seat is like a big beach chair. The ones with a piece of cloth suspended on a frame. Do you think in a world of autonomous driving cars, we can make the cars lighter again? I suspect that in the future, around 2100, there will probably be a lucrative industry around turning old-timers into self driving vehicle. Once a technology is commoditised it needs to be commercialised in another way. Maybe then driving will be fun again, like a big theme park.
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#5> In the end, these determinations all place an unspoken price on human life
We are already doing this by letting people drive with personal vehicles every year even they cost dozens of thousands of lives. There is no zero risk, but we decide (we, as in, the society at large, not individuals) what level of harm is "acceptable".
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#6Something that seems not to be considered by many observers is that if a disease is not eliminated, it will continuously either claim lives or reduce efficiency (which claims lives).
Is there reasonable hope for a virus like this to be completely eliminated? I figure if it's in that sweet spot of contagiousness, incubation time and mortality, it's hard to eradicate completely. And unless it's eradicated completely, we'll absolutely have to live with reduced efficiency in hyper-alert testing of anyone with symptoms, unless we find that it ceases to be a serious problem once humans have had contact with it.
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#7> In the end, these determinations all place an unspoken price on human life We are already doing this by letting people drive with personal vehicles every year even they cost dozens of thousands of lives. There is no zero risk, but we decide (we, as in, the society at large, not individuals) what level of harm is "acceptable".
But here the decision making is localized to individuals, and their decisions can formally be translated into pricing human life. I'd hate to be the one having to make these calls.
I mean, various insurances price human lives already, so it's not exactly novel, but here the decisions directly cause these tradeoffs to play out (whereas e.g. a life insurance does not cause a death for monetary gain).
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#8Some good points, although I'd toss another thought into the mix. The confinements and shutdowns and shelter in place orders also cost lives. We know that recessions cost lives. One study (published in The Lancet, so worth taking a second look at) suggested 500k excess cancer deaths from the global financial crisis[1], and another study (published in the BMJ) suggested that excess suicides in 2009 alone across the US…
If the movement restrictions cost lives, why are total fatalities down? (even including SARS deaths)
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#9Something that seems not to be considered by many observers is that if a disease is not eliminated, it will continuously either claim lives or reduce efficiency (which claims lives).
Is there reasonable hope for a virus like this to be completely eliminated? I figure if it's in that sweet spot of contagiousness, incubation time and mortality, it's hard to eradicate completely. And unless it's eradicated completely, we'll absolutely have to live with reduced efficiency in hyper-alert testing of anyone with symptoms, unless we find that it ceases to be a serious problem once humans have had contact…
It probably depends on how long acquired immunity lasts, which we don't know yet. People remain immune to some diseases, like measles, for a lifetime after surviving the disease or being vaccinated. Immunity to other diseases, like influenza, disappears quickly (even immunity to the same strain lasts less than a year).[1]
If COVID-19 is in the latter category, it will be difficult to control and we'll probably have to learn to live with it, as we have learned to live with the flu causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year worldwide.
1: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/how-long-do-vaccines...
Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
#10> In the end, these determinations all place an unspoken price on human life We are already doing this by letting people drive with personal vehicles every year even they cost dozens of thousands of lives. There is no zero risk, but we decide (we, as in, the society at large, not individuals) what level of harm is "acceptable".
The line between deciding that a particular level of harm is acceptable, and accepting it by default, is blurry. And yet allowing, through inaction, a human being to come to harm is not functionally or morally different than deliberately harming them. And so we wash our hands of responsibility by telling ourselves we didn't do anything. But who are we fooling?