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Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

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Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#51

Post by drapred7 »

leereeves wrote: post #20
drapred7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That likely depends on how effective we are at eliminating it in the coming months. I doubt it will become endemic in Korea or Singapore. I wonder if even influenza could be erraticated in the coming years with mass testing and contact tracing. The lockdowns ended flu season early this year.

We'd have to eliminate it worldwide, or it would travel from country to country like the flu does. In particular, from Mexico. There's too much travel between the US and Mexico to prevent it from crossing the border, and there are 50,000 confirmed cases in Mexico already, with roughly 2000 more being found every day.

Reducing travel from Mexico has been a popular position in the Us for decades.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#53

Post by Fradow »

I am under the impression the author is missing the point of the lockdown. The main point is not about "saving lives" / "avoiding deaths".

Lockdown is about (1) keeping hospitals under capacity and (2) hopefully slowing the virus to the point it's not an epidemic anymore.

If you don't keep hospitals under capacity, people who can be cured have to be either moved somewhere else at great cost (this happened, there have been people moved from France to Germany) or left to die because they cannot be taken care of (I am pretty sure this happened too). Please note people who have another issue than the Coronavirus are also affected. That's what everyone REALLY wants to avoid. Needless to say, letting the virus run its course and overwhelm hospitals would have an order of magnitude more deaths.

The hard issue is about how to re-open without letting the virus rampage again. It's a lot of difficult decisions, and no one have conclusive data on what works and what does not. It's going to be a lot of trial and error, as shown by the fact that no 2 countries have the same rules to reopen.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#54

Post by boomboomsubban »

thepete2 wrote: post #35
boomboomsubban wrote: post #28

>The Hong Kong Flu caused more deaths than are projected for this current pandemic and yet, at the time, no one thought of bringing entire economies to a halt. The other way to look at it, even with the quarentine this pandemic will kill a similar number of people. If the reports were true that "half the workers were in bed," that would mean there were millions of cases, yet only ~50k deaths. Compare that to the curr…

I can't follow the argument. The Hong Kong Flu caused more deaths without the economy shutting down than this epidemic with the economy shutting down, therefore what?

The shutdown looks like it will lead to both epidemics having roughly the same amount of deaths. Unless you think the shutdown had minimal effect, without it the death rate would be far worse than the Hong Kong Flu.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#55

Post by WalterBright »

pmiller2 wrote: post #39
WalterBright wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We realized we just don't need humans on the moon. Compared with robots, we're terribly fragile, inefficient, and largely superfluous on the surface of the Moon in a lunar exploration mission. Robots are inflexible. There's nothing like human eyes and hands.

Even if I agreed with you in this context (I don't -- hands inside space suits are clumsy, and eyes limited in what they can perceive compared to instruments), we can keep the people here on Earth operating the robots with ~1 second latency, and it will be fine. We even operate rovers on Mars with ~20 minute latency, and they've worked out well.

They've worked out well considering the extremely limited scope of what they can do. They can't, for example, brush the dust off their solar panels. Or even the simplest repair. Or dig a hole with a pickaxe.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#56

Post by lbeltrame »

pjc50 wrote: post #25
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #3

Something 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).

Yes, people are really underestimating the effects of the virus that aren't fatal. While I know nobody that's died from it I know several who've been off sick for weeks.

The literature has a lot of case reports, but nothing substantial last time I checked. This makes a non-sensationalistic look at those issues (and more importantly, how much they occur) difficult.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#57

Post by pmiller2 »

Lazare wrote: post #47
pmiller2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding point 3, I think your examples, being individual sports that people choose to participate in, are kind of straw men. For one, relatively few people die doing them. For another, as I mentioned, they're activities that people participate in, knowing that there are some serious risks. A better example would be "let's end all farm subsidies for sugar and tobacco." You could arguably include corn here, as well.…

My point isn't that they're equivalent (they're not), but that the analysis never stops at "this will save lives, so we should do it". There's always more layers, such as here your very valid analysis of whether people are choosing to participate.

No, but you'd get the point across better by using a less ridiculous example -- that's my point. Nobody's ever going to support a ban on surfing because it's just ludicrous on its face. Ending tobacco and sugar subsidies is something that could get real consideration today.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#58

Post by ekianjo »

watwut wrote: post #48
ekianjo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we still have dozens of thousands of people dying from them every year and nobody stops sleeping at night at the same time.

Unites States have 35,000 to 40,000 car crashes deaths per year. It is what we get. Cumulative Covid deaths so far were 90,694 and it is not done yet. > nobody stops sleeping at night at the same time When driving deaths go up, people do react. There are driving safety campaigns, dont drive drunk campaigns, wear seatbelts campaigns. The roads are changed, signs are put up, speed limits are placed.

> When driving deaths go up, people do react. There are driving safety campaigns, dont drive drunk campaigns, wear seatbelts campaigns. The roads are changed, signs are put up, speed limits are placed.

Yes, but these show marginal improvements. I don't think you can make the case that any of these measures, even combined, would be able to reduce the death toll by even 50% over time. It means that, all in all, we are pretty much willing to sacrifice at least X amount of people per year for a number of reasons.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#59

Post by elcomet »

drapred7 wrote: post #52
elcomet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, movement restrictions cause deaths in longer terms than the virus.

How?

Movement restrictions causes financial difficulties for companies, which cause job losses, which can cause depression. All this can take time.

Re: Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life

#60

Post by sigotirandolas »

lbeltrame wrote: post #50
sigotirandolas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been many, many more cases than the official confirmed (=medically tested/diagnosed positive) cases. For example data in Spain points to 5% prevalence (~2M infected) with ~25k deaths (official number, may be higher due to unverified and side cases).

Do you know if the serological data in Spain has also per-city estimates? I doubt the 5% is evenly distributed across the population, I'm expecting higher percentages in Madrid, for example.

If I remember correctly the data from Spain is also available itemized by region (autonomous community), and indeed the most population-dense regions have a higher prevalence. I believe the data isn't broken down by city, but it should be obvious that they're going to have a higher prevalence as well.
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