How many deaths are acceptable to save the Economy?

Didn't Planet Money do a legitimate podcast episode on this last month?

 

Is there any break down in the number of deaths from covid 19 verses dying with covid 19?

 

do you mean, “hey this person was already dying from cancer” or “hey this person’s stroke might have had nothing to do with the blood-clotting virus they had” type of thing? Or “he was already in hospice”? It’s a good question.

I can offer this valid take to death tallies: 100% of COVID victims were going to eventually die of something else anyway.

on the serious, most experts believe we’re undercounting COVID deaths, for what it’s worth. The total number of deaths in the US is way ahead of schedule and the excess is greater than our 100k or whatever COVID deaths.

 

on a related but different topic, don't know if you saw the article in the Post yesterday about calculating Value of a Statistical Life aka VSL. pretty good piece

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...rth-it-hasnt-made-difference-covid-19-crisis/

 

A friends father recently pass away after a long battle with cancer. He tested positive before going on hospice. I'm curious what was stated as the cause of death. I just don't want to come across as a jerk asking questions at this time.

 

Darwinism 101.

I am willing to give up Trump, Pence, McConnel, Paul, graham.

DD

 

The flipside of this question is how many deaths are you willing to accept from other causes to stop deaths from Covid? For example, suicides, poverty, etc. Here's an article from California a few days ago:

https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-during-pandemic-death-by/6201962/

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (KGO) -- Doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek say they have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from the COVID-19 virus.

...

"We've never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time," he said. "I mean we've seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks."

If we say "listen to the scientists", here's Dr. Fauci on Friday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/dr-...-too-long-could-cause-irreparable-damage.html

Stay-at-home orders intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus could end up causing “irreparable damage” if imposed for too long, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNBC on Friday.

“I don’t want people to think that any of us feel that staying locked down for a prolonged period of time is the way to go,” Fauci said during an interview with CNBC’s Meg Tirrell on “Halftime Report.”

He said the U.S. had to institute severe measures because Covid-19 cases were exploding then. “But now is the time, depending upon where you are and what your situation is, to begin to seriously look at reopening the economy, reopening the country to try to get back to some degree of normal.”

However, Fauci also cautioned states against reducing social distancing measures too quickly, adding they must take “very significant precautions.”

“In general, I think most of the country is doing it in a prudent way,” he said. “There are obviously some situations where people might be jumping over that. I just say please proceed with caution if you’re going to do that.”

It's bizarre that both sides have politicized this to such an extreme than any precautions are a violation of freedom and any openings are people dying for the economy.

 

Republicans don't care - especially now that they realize that most of the people dying are going to be the poor.

But even if this virus kills people they care about - it's the liberals fault, it's the Chinese fault, it's the blacks fault, it's the mexicans fault, but never will it be their fault for refusing to put on a effing mask.

 

Of course it does, though probably not by the degree you think. But you seem to have completely missed the point. What about the # of future deaths from poverty, all forms of mental illness, missed cancer diagnoses, etc? To put in the absurd terms of your original question, how many people are you willing to sacrifice for each Covid life saved? 1? 10? 1,000?

 

A member of our gaming community died a couple days ago. He was such a great and funny guy and one of the best that I've ever seen at the game. I raided with him for years and it's hard to believe he's gone. He was 24. Here is a link to a GoFundMe. I'm glad that many people in our little gaming community have stepped forward to help his family at this terrible time.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/NathanBurley

 

How many millions of jobs need to be lost, many of them permanently...along with all the other associated issues like suicides, etc to satisfy this desire to have a perfect world before we decide to stop creating an intentional depression? It's 38 million already, and many millions more are on the brink, as the lost spending of those 38 million spreads throughout the rest of the economy. How many is enough?

a. 50 million
b. 70 million
c. All of them...we have to wait until everyone has lost their job.
d. It's too many already.

There, now its a fair poll.

 

Haha. So, all we need to do is make a bunch of white towels?! ;-)

 

It's the latter. Or just a complete inability to grasp that there are multiple sides to this issue, and that we as a society, pretty much globally, have indeed already decided these tradeoffs, as others have pointed out.

For those who think any life lost is too many:

1. Do you drive or go anywhere in a car? Tens of thousands die in auto accidents every year.
2. Do you self quarantine during flu season? Tens of thousands die of the flu every year.
3. Do you think we should never do anything that entails any risk of loss of human life...then do you have any idea how many examples could be provided that proof that we do this all the time?

We already have metrics indicating were we stand on these things. We haven't banned cars, even though that costs tens of thousands of lives every year. We don't quarantine every flu season. We don't just hide in our caves, scared to come out, because coming out is dangerous. We never have...going back tens of thousands of years.

it's all about calculated risk, and we make decisions like this all the time in our daily lives.

It also indicates that all those thinking along these lines have forgotten what the reason for the lock down was in the first place. It's always been about one thing: overwhelming the health care system. Even in the hard hit spots, during the peaks, that never happened.

I wonder how many of those not wanting to open the economy back up have lost their jobs? I suspect....none of them.

Basic equation: which is worse: 1,000 people dying, or 1 million people with no way to support themselves or their family?

Easy to say there is no price to put on human life, but we already do that, PLUS of those 1 million out of work...how many of them might die anyway, through suicide or other causes? Is 0.1% a reasonable floor? If so, then the equation looks like this:

Which is worse: 1,000 people dying, or 1 million people out of work AND 1,000+ people dying anyway.

And yet there are still a lot of people picking the right side of that equation. Begging the questions: why are they so anxious to inflict as much harm and death as possible? Or are they really that naive about the broader implications of these choices? There is NO scenario that just has less loss of life with no other implications. Worse, there isn't likely even any scenario that has less loss of life...just loss of life through different means, with all the other negative consequences.

 

I agree. It is a very difficult decision, one which forces any politician to accept a certain loss of life. That is the case regardless of which party one might belong to. In fact, the only thing that would change if the party's in this were switched is the rhetoric each side is spouting. I don't think the actual decisions would be any different, as exemplified by states across the country opening up, regardless of which party runs them. For all those thinking this is too soon, what do you have to say to all those Democratic governors ... opening things up? Are they wrong? If they are, what should they do...keep their state closed? As the job losses there piled up...would you still think it was the right decision? At what point exactly would you stop thinking that? Real question.

 

How many jobs were propped up by this imaginary great economy we had? We never really recovered from the Great Recession and most of those jobs would have been cut eventually anyways just not all at once.

 

You can stop all car fatalities if we stop everyone from driving. How many lives are you willing to sacrifice to keep driving? How many is too many?

 

If a person had covid, and they’re dead/dying it’s almost 100% due to that. The illness it causes in those affected (ARDS) is one of the most serious/fatal lung problems you can have. These people also get pulmonary embolisms, which is the other most serious cause of sudden death. It’s almost like saying, “all those people with massive heart attacks may have just died from old age”