How many deaths are acceptable to save the Economy?

I think we're talking past each other.

I think my response to the OP and to multiple people, including yourself, already in this thread has made my point clear. You're not addressing my position. I've boiled it down to the minimum and you're still not addressing it.

1. People die every year from infectious diseases because of how we interact with each other.
2. Less would die of infectious disease every year if we lived the way we have the last six weeks full time.
3. We have all made a calculation as to what is an "acceptable" number of infectious disease deaths every year.

That's the only point I'm conveying. So, for others to pose the question, "How many deaths is acceptable?" in a morally superior rhetorical way, I would point out every year we don't socially distance and wear PPE we letting people die who need not have had we ordered society in a different way and they are part of that.

 

I think I get what you're saying and I agree that we make policy decisions all the time with the understanding that people die. The best example is with cars. We know in many years auto accidents are among the top causes of deaths. We do a lot of things to limit that but in the end we still drive as there is an economic benefit in regard to letting people drive. If your argument is that we do accept death yes I think you're right that's not really what is being asked as the question is how many deaths?

The other problem that I have and I think most people have is that what we're seeing is not really comparable to anything we've seen as a society in most of our lifetimes. As such logically it would make sense that we have a response to this out of the norm. The risk of this is already proven to be far beyond the norm. Simply saying that we always accept a certain amount of deaths doesn't really address a situation where the amount of deaths is far beyond what we always see.

 

I think if you read the title of the thread and the OP it's not a genuine question of how many deaths are we willing to accept. I read it as a rhetorical question blasting the notion that it's acceptable to let people die to go back to the status quo. My point this whole time has simply been we've always accepted a number of preventable deaths from infectious disease to have our status quo. With this pandemic the scale has extrapolated but the fundamental question of how many people are we allowing to let die of infectious disease to maintain the status quo has remained the same. I don't have an answer for that but I think the point I'm trying to make is worth pointing out.

 

The OP did lay out certain numbers. You're free to select an answer or not. That said I'm not sure just stating that we already tolerate a certain amount of death and using what happened in previous years doesn't address the unusual nature of this situation. Your point is technically correct but doesn't really add anything to this debate.

 

There is no real debate here. It's a disingenuous question and I think you know that.

This thread wasn't created to actually have a legitimate discussion on, "How many deaths are acceptable to save the economy" - It's an inflammatory rhetorical question. I think that's obvious from the title of the thread and the original post.

In response to seeing that, I thought it worthwhile to point out that if we practiced the practices we have for the last six weeks always less people would die of infectious diseases every year. So, there is actually a number of preventable infectious disease deaths associated with operating the status quo.

 

And do you have a number for that?

You keep on stating this without any recognition of the scale. It would be like saying that a Southwest Airlines plane running off of a runway is the same as 9/11 since both are plane crashes.

 

No, nobody has a number that's why not one written response in this thread has someone articulating a number... it was never a real question... how do you not see that...

I've recognized the difference in scale several times....It doesn't really make a difference to my point though...

Post #38

Post#49

Post#58

Post#75

 

How many deaths IN YOUR OWN FAMILY are acceptable to save the economy?

Are strangers lives worth less than your family members lives?

We are all in this together. Right?

 

That would actually be a great question for Trump, Cruz, and Abbott.

 

I find this amusing when you are being disingenuous with your logic.

You start to get into philosophical about accepted numbers of things when we accept skydivers dying and still do it. No one is going around asking for someone to sneeze and give them an infectious disease so to argue we are ok with it is strange disingenuous logic.

You miss 100% of the shots you dont take so by your logic we should end all things that kill / accept that we accept death when almost always 100% of the deaths were not invited. Especially ones caught by virus!

And no we are not continuing the status quo! When aids came out people mixed in more rubbers? There is no acceptable virus death!

Malaria as example is preventable disease is not acceptable and as a society we are failing poor places and society that has water contamination deaths and e coli deaths et al.

That is not status quo and thankfully intiatives to get toilets in india and malaria nets are changes to the status quo.

How long before 'covid saves lives' since less people are dying?

Are some crosswalks poorly designed? Yes..are we accepting death to let people get run over there?

How many dead before we fixed it?most of the time we do when as little as one person...why? since as a courtesy flush of a species thats what we do for each other.

Try to read. Dont drive drunk. Eat your veggies. Don't blow 2nd hand smoke on my baby in a no smoking zone.

No death is acceptable and when it becomes as such you have died yourself

 

IF they can drag this thing out until November
That means lower voter turn out

Who does that help?
It goes to incentive and motive, Your Honor.

Rocket River

 

At this rate we will be lucky not to loose half a million people when all is said and done. Having potentially 1 in every 500 Americans die from this is within the next couple of years is pretty major.

And again, death isn’t the only worry, long term / permenant organ damage is also a serious concern when talking about potentially 1 in 5 Americans being infected. Even if complications are rare, just due the the sheer volume of people infected a tragic number of people are likely to have life long complications.

 

This is where the question of scale and context is important. The fundamental question isn't the same. That would again be like saying a Southwest Airlines plane running off of a runaway and 9/11 are fundamentally the same. Both are plane crashes but our reactions to them are vastly different.

Your point is that we accept death. The point of this thread is how much? You refuse to engage the thread on that level. That's your right to do so but it adds nothing to the discussion.

Here I'll help. Considering we already put in place actions to try to contain this virus clearly a few hundred deaths from COVID-19 were already enough to trigger major policy changes. I would personally as long as we're seeing a at least few hundred deaths a day from COVID-19 specifically (we're at close to 3,000 a day) we will need to be taking steps that will affect the economy. That doesn't mean the economy has to be as dire as it is now but we can't expect it to be booming. Things like social distancing especially in service industries will have a negative effect on the economy. I both expect and accept that there will be a long term drag on the economy until a vaccine or much better treatments.

 

My point is simple.

OP: How many deaths [from Covid-19] are acceptable to save the economy?
Me: We already accept X* number of deaths from infectious disease every year which would have been prevented had we socially distanced and worn PPE full time. So, clearly, there is a certain number of infectious disease deaths we are ok with as long as society can operate "normally."

*The actual number of X deaths is immaterial. The point is, we still accept a certain amount of preventable deaths every year from infectious diseases so we don't have to socially distance and wear PPE full time. Whether X deaths is 10 or 10,000. There is still a number of deaths we could prevent. It doesn't make a difference to the point I'm making.

The point of this thread was never to actually ask how much. That's why we're 5 pages in and no one has articulated a number. The point of this thread was to moralize. How you don't recognize that is beyond me.

 

A virus that created by you ChiCom bastards.

 

Yeah but then the economy would be saved - everything would go back to normal and cruise lines would be open and just dumping bodies in the ocean.

 

I appreciate that you’ve taken the OP to be disingenuous. I hear that.

I did not take it that way, and actually I did have a post trying to answer this. By opening up we are making a practical but kind of grim choice, saying up to 250k is going to have to be acceptable.

I can go find the post and exact # I estimated, but at least one poster, me, sincerely answered the question.

 

Any chance we hit 100K this week? by Saturday.

Rocket River

 

14 days later

Rocket River