The problem with "extra years of life" metrics is that they artificially play down the death wave on older segments of the population, as if those dying from covid19 who happen to be older than 40yo should not matter to society.
The consequences of this nonsensical pick of statistics indicators is that a death wave of thousands of people per day that happens to hit harder on the > 40yo segment is watered down with "all this just to gain 3 hours of life" nonsense, as if all the coffins were only piling up because instead of being delivered on scheduled they needed to be delivered 3 hours earlier.
It does seem to me that a more just system would consider "time lost" as a metric since surely it can't be binary.
You're the one trying to quantify the value of life.
To me, my parents and grandparents are more important than your 1yo son/daughter, so YMMV.
Still, you're missing the whole point. The point is that it makes absolutely no sense to downplay an epidemic just because it hits hardest on those suffering from pre-existing medical conditions or being over 40. The coffins piling up on makeshift morgues make it quite obvious that the real effect of the death wave is not anticipating death by a couple of hours, and it matters nothing if those doing the dying are sick, old, or disabled.
You are bringing out facts such as "coffins are piling up" etc, this fact could be true if in one morgue in two places in the world there were coffins piling up. Maybe these morgues can only handle 5 deaths at once and now there's 5 more for each?
You need to quantify things to understand how bad they are. Otherwise these statements are meaningless.
You are essentially quantifying - any statement you do you is actually quantifying. For instance if you bring out the argument about coffins piling you seem to be considering potentially 10 deaths (which could cause coffins piling) to be the same as the whole world population dying.
I'm stating the exact opposite: that crudely abusing statistics to pretend that people over 40 don't count for nothing because they will die in a few years is abhorrent, and downplays the real impact of the whole covid death wave.
And otherwise, assume there is a fire and you are in the middle of a corridor. On one end there is your mother, on the other there is some 1 year old you don't know in any way. Which would you rush to save first? I know I would rush to save my mother before the 1 year old.
Wrong, the implications is that it makes absolutely no sense to state that society should just let old people die simply because you're so self-centered that you even fail to register the devastating effect of an epidemic just because you believe it doesn't affect you personally.
According to that logic you should have all 7+ billion people working that whole week to keep this person alive.
Would the man-hours spent saving that person have to be exactly the same as saving someone who has further life expectancy of 70 years?
> You're pretending that the economic dislocations are do to measures to combate the virus instead of the virus killing people. Countries that acted swiftly and forcefully are returning to normal right now. While countries that are handling the way you want are seeing no end to this. Meaning you are 180 degrees wrong, your way kills people from the virus. You way kills people via extended economic dislocation.
1. I haven't made a choice on what is the best option.
2. There's no "my way", all I'm saying that these aspects should be considered and math should be ran and it is possible that another option could be better, a combination of some options etc. And in order to determine what is the best way should be using calculations.
3. It should also be discussed how to do these calculations. Should we consider death as a binary or should we consider "time left", "quality time left". How do we calculate loss of life, time, resources that stems from people unable to be productive etc, because certainly there are consequences to that.
4. I'm trying to prove that this should not be binary and there should be a line drawn somewhere considering all the pros and cons from the both sides, assigning weights to those and trying to predict what is best option from that.
These discussions should still be held even if it's not about coronavirus, but other similar decisions as well.
So once again is that choice also appropriate if 7+ bln people have to spend 3 months working in order to save your dad? Obviously a lot of other people die because if they have to work 3 months saving your father it means the doctors are not saving other people, we won't have food etc.
I'm trying to show that there must be a line drawn somewhere and it can't be binary.
This analysis is flawed, because it compares the entire cost to only parts of the gain. Economic depression because no-one dares to go outside of fear for their lives, has for instance negative value too.
There's a lot of math and viewpoints that should be considered here. It does not seem to me that proponents of lockdowns are even doing any maths, it seems like they take it for guaranteed that lockdowns are the only choice.
We can’t know this number conclusively until a few years from now. The pandemic is still ongoing and does not have a flat distribution of impact over time.
So all this analysis is based on a false premise.
That "3 hours" mean that you're likely to loose one of the relatives or friends who are in high risk group. Suddenly a month of lockdown is worth to give your loved ones years or even decades.
Not arguing one way or the other, but I most certainly would not call it likely. Germany had more deaths than Iceland per capita and none of my relatives or friends are or know anyone even infected, let alone dead.
In Germany, you’d need to know about 440 people to even know someone who has been confirmed infected, in Iceland still around 200. To know someone who died, you’d need to know 9,661 in Germany and 36,363 in Iceland.
I have a feeling as things open up, more people are going to have my experience.
Edit:
> does it makes it a media hoax
Honestly, you completely lost me there. Did you read some other comment and attributed it to me?
edit2: FWIW, I wear a mask when going to the store despite it being only required inside, one of maybe 5% of people who do that. And that’s in a city of 200k with 0 known active cases.
Personally I'd rather not gamble wether I'd end up on tragedy or statistics side.
Not even close. For example, no one I know has been directly hurt by the coronavirus. And neither has anyone they know, including my friend from Wuhan.
(Why "directly"? I do know someone who had a mental breakdown related to isolation.)
I suspect you don't know the fate of everyone known by everyone you know.
Certain information is significantly more likely than average to be broadcast. Do I know what those people are doing? Do I have any idea who they are? No.
But I do know they haven't been hurt by the coronavirus.
As a more straightforward example, it's simpler to compare countries with closed pandemics - say Iceland or New Zealand. Iceland has much higher deaths per capita, but they didn't lock down nearly as hard (groups limited to 10, schools open for kids below age 10, etc.). If you do the math, Iceland lost about 120 extra years of life, or something like ~3 hours per person. Is depriving everyone of additional liberties for a month worth increasing life expectancy by 3 hours?
The case for France vs. Sweden is a bit more complex, since Sweden, even though it isn't locked down, will be "unsafe" for large numbers of people longer. The raw math and projection models suggests Sweden will lose an extra 1-2 days of life per person, but more analysis is needed to really understand benefits and costs.