Interesting analysis, thanks for looking into it. I am not sure the amount of lifetime gained / lost as an individual is quite the right way to look at the positive side of the ledger, however. You also have to consider the loss of expected lifespan for your friends, parents, children, favourite celebrities, etc.
"would you have pref…
Interesting analysis, thanks for looking into it. I am not sure the amount of lifetime gained / lost as an individual is quite the right way to look at the positive side of the ledger, however. You also have to consider the loss of expected lifespan for your friends, parents, children, favourite celebrities, etc.
"would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save yourself 10-to-15 days of life? " is a different question than "Here’s a question: would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save EVERYONE 10-to-15 days of life? ".
Added a note: [ADDED NOTE, 8/30/22: Commenter FXBDM points out that we should actually be considering: “would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save EVERYONE 10-to-15 days of life?” … After all, preventing Covid saves not just you those days, but it also saves those days for people you care about. This makes it a harder question.]
But the cost of the measures is also incurred by everyone including your friends, family, loved ones etc. So you also have to add that to the negative side as well. E.g. ”would you have preferred for EVERYONE to have lived through total travel bans....”. The way proposed by the parent comment makes it sound like you are making an individual sacrifice that benefits everyone rather than everyone taking part in a collective sacrifice.
That's quite true and I did think about it. I felt that "live through a total travel ban" etc. implied the social consequences of that ban somewhat, whereas "save yourself 10-to-15 days of life" is quite clearly strictly about the individual impact. As out host says, it's a complex equation.
Because loss of life and severe illness is so heavily skewed towards a small subset of the population, you could rephrase again and say something like "would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save everyone over the age of 65 two months of life, on average, and people below 65 on average a few days of life?"
If you murder one person out of a 330 million population, you can say "this had an impact of a loss of a few seconds of life on average for this population"- which is obviously a bad argument; however, I like that you give the opportunity cost framing in the same sentence. It's not whether extending life on average is good, but whether it is worth the costs we must impose on society to accomplish that improvement.
Really good piece overall, thanks for writing this.
Another thing: even among people who do survive COVID, plenty spend some time quite sick, so it's not just 10-to-15 days of life but also a comparable amount of healthy time.
Better question: how many teenagers are you willing to sacrifice to save EVERYONE else 10 to 15 days of life? That is, lockdowns increased the # of teen suicides, so how many teens are you willing to sacrifice for a few more days of life (generally concentrated amongst the oldest & sickest)? As for me, I reject human sacrifice entirely - how about you?
That's an excellent question, of course, and it brings about a whole another set of questions about the validity of "days of life saved" statistics for evaluating moral quandaries. Your example illustrates the matter perfectly by comparing actual concentrated deaths to idealized distributed days-of-lifes. We can also do it the other way around: This describes the increase in suicides in 14 states representing 33% of the US teenage population. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2791544
The answer across those 14 states is 68 extra suicides during the pandemic, which we assume are all due to the effects of lockdown. Let's extrapolate to 210 total deaths for the US. Every single one of those a tragedy, I hasten to add.
The stats are not broken down by age, so let's say they were all 13 with a 67 year life expectancy. That's 14 070 years lost. There are 42 million adolescents in the US according to google's first result. so this amounts to 0.000335 years lost for each of them, or just a wee bit less than 3 hours.
Total excess COVID deaths according to Mr. Lott's article are 1,1 million people, roughly the population of San Jose, California.
So here's my question, would you be willing to sacrifice the whole population of San Jose, California, so that teenagers in the USA today would live 3 hours more?
I'm not dunking on you, by the way. I'm glad that you expressed some of my discomfort with added years of life in moral quandaries.
Got to really think about this - so it's a great point. I think my response is that we shouldn't be trading lives, so doing nothing is morally preferable to doing something that trades lives. That is, I wouldn't trade San Jose for some teens living a little longer because I wouldn't trade anybody for anybody; I'd leave it to everyone to choose for themselves.
In part, this is b/c I think such trading is immoral.
In part, it's b/c I think such trading tends to be based on errors.
But mostly it's b/c I believe that you can change the tradeoffs. The problem is that other responses would have saved EVERYBODY, but they were crowded out by collective decision-making. In theory & in practice, letting people choose for themselves generally render trade unnecessary.
It's the old trolley problem - generally, you can't see which track has fewer lives at stake & you tend to choose the wrong one, but - here's the kicker - the people on the track and/or on trolley tend to avoid the worst results b/c they're better positioned regardless.
The tradeoffs are wrong in every sense of that word - I think, but still thinking about your point! Thanks.
Interesting analysis, thanks for looking into it. I am not sure the amount of lifetime gained / lost as an individual is quite the right way to look at the positive side of the ledger, however. You also have to consider the loss of expected lifespan for your friends, parents, children, favourite celebrities, etc.
"would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save yourself 10-to-15 days of life? " is a different question than "Here’s a question: would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save EVERYONE 10-to-15 days of life? ".
Yes, good point.
Added a note: [ADDED NOTE, 8/30/22: Commenter FXBDM points out that we should actually be considering: “would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save EVERYONE 10-to-15 days of life?” … After all, preventing Covid saves not just you those days, but it also saves those days for people you care about. This makes it a harder question.]
But the cost of the measures is also incurred by everyone including your friends, family, loved ones etc. So you also have to add that to the negative side as well. E.g. ”would you have preferred for EVERYONE to have lived through total travel bans....”. The way proposed by the parent comment makes it sound like you are making an individual sacrifice that benefits everyone rather than everyone taking part in a collective sacrifice.
Yes, true.
I've removed my added comment because I think it's too complex for a side comment (maybe a future post.)
That's quite true and I did think about it. I felt that "live through a total travel ban" etc. implied the social consequences of that ban somewhat, whereas "save yourself 10-to-15 days of life" is quite clearly strictly about the individual impact. As out host says, it's a complex equation.
Because loss of life and severe illness is so heavily skewed towards a small subset of the population, you could rephrase again and say something like "would you have preferred to live through a total travel ban and total lockdowns, like Australia’s, to save everyone over the age of 65 two months of life, on average, and people below 65 on average a few days of life?"
If you murder one person out of a 330 million population, you can say "this had an impact of a loss of a few seconds of life on average for this population"- which is obviously a bad argument; however, I like that you give the opportunity cost framing in the same sentence. It's not whether extending life on average is good, but whether it is worth the costs we must impose on society to accomplish that improvement.
Really good piece overall, thanks for writing this.
Another thing: even among people who do survive COVID, plenty spend some time quite sick, so it's not just 10-to-15 days of life but also a comparable amount of healthy time.
Better question: how many teenagers are you willing to sacrifice to save EVERYONE else 10 to 15 days of life? That is, lockdowns increased the # of teen suicides, so how many teens are you willing to sacrifice for a few more days of life (generally concentrated amongst the oldest & sickest)? As for me, I reject human sacrifice entirely - how about you?
That's an excellent question, of course, and it brings about a whole another set of questions about the validity of "days of life saved" statistics for evaluating moral quandaries. Your example illustrates the matter perfectly by comparing actual concentrated deaths to idealized distributed days-of-lifes. We can also do it the other way around: This describes the increase in suicides in 14 states representing 33% of the US teenage population. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2791544
The answer across those 14 states is 68 extra suicides during the pandemic, which we assume are all due to the effects of lockdown. Let's extrapolate to 210 total deaths for the US. Every single one of those a tragedy, I hasten to add.
The stats are not broken down by age, so let's say they were all 13 with a 67 year life expectancy. That's 14 070 years lost. There are 42 million adolescents in the US according to google's first result. so this amounts to 0.000335 years lost for each of them, or just a wee bit less than 3 hours.
Total excess COVID deaths according to Mr. Lott's article are 1,1 million people, roughly the population of San Jose, California.
So here's my question, would you be willing to sacrifice the whole population of San Jose, California, so that teenagers in the USA today would live 3 hours more?
I'm not dunking on you, by the way. I'm glad that you expressed some of my discomfort with added years of life in moral quandaries.
Got to really think about this - so it's a great point. I think my response is that we shouldn't be trading lives, so doing nothing is morally preferable to doing something that trades lives. That is, I wouldn't trade San Jose for some teens living a little longer because I wouldn't trade anybody for anybody; I'd leave it to everyone to choose for themselves.
In part, this is b/c I think such trading is immoral.
In part, it's b/c I think such trading tends to be based on errors.
But mostly it's b/c I believe that you can change the tradeoffs. The problem is that other responses would have saved EVERYBODY, but they were crowded out by collective decision-making. In theory & in practice, letting people choose for themselves generally render trade unnecessary.
It's the old trolley problem - generally, you can't see which track has fewer lives at stake & you tend to choose the wrong one, but - here's the kicker - the people on the track and/or on trolley tend to avoid the worst results b/c they're better positioned regardless.
The tradeoffs are wrong in every sense of that word - I think, but still thinking about your point! Thanks.
Public health is about trading lives vs public investment in pushing lifestyle. Health freedom is about walking away from what the "experts" say.