Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
There is an economic and social cost to the anti-coronavirus measures though, and a lot of people are just waving their hands about death rates and exponential growth. The death rates are not meaningful because testing hasn't been sufficient to estimate the total number of cases. Exponential growth is a mathematical model which may or may not describe what's happening.
I think we are bad at looking at risk or comparing health problems or death to financial implications. When average or poorer people lose income it has a real impact on their well-being but we tend not to quantify it, while 1 death of an 84 year old who tested positive for coronavirus makes the news in North America right now.
I agree that it makes sense to take strong measures early on. But it'll be important to try to relax as quickly as we safely can to keep the economy from being seriously damaged. I am hoping we'll quickly see a reduction in new cases and we can gradually try new things like re-opening restaurants. Maybe if people are more careful (just doing things like washing hands or staying home when sick) and we do lots of testing, transmission will drop below the rate at which it spreads uncontrollably through the population.
|
I agree with the main points regarding the difficulty in comparing harm in the form of deaths and illness to harm from economic hardship. Someone already pointed out that exponential growth isn't theoretical when it comes to disease (or many other applications) so I won't belabour that point. What I did want to mention is that I worry people may be overly cavalier with the death rate due to it being mainly in seniors. It might be tempting to say that since the average life expectancy in Canada is 82 years, that someone who is 84 is basically about to die anyway so having it done by a disease that would be survivable for most younger people is just nature taking its course and not worth too much societal disruption to prevent (I'm not saying you believe this, but I've encountered people who seem to). But in reality, the average life expectancy doesn't say a whole lot about how long a person can expect to live once they already get to that age because it includes all the people who died earlier of any other cause (cancer or other illness, homicide/suicide, car or various other accidents, etc.) So if you manage to survive all those things and make it to your 80s, you could very well live another decade or more.
That being said, it's possible that many of the elderly people who succumb to the disease are more frail than average and may not have lived as long, but we don't really know. To understand the actual loss of life, lets imagine that all the people who died could have expected an average of just another 5 years of life. At the time I'm writing this there have been 14,600 deaths globally based on
this link. That equates to 890 whole 82 year lifetimes or the deaths of 1973 fourty-five year olds who would otherwise have lived to 82. Any disease that was highly infectious, present in Canada, and that already killed nearly 2000 people of average age globally, I think we'd be every bit as cautious. And really even if 14,600 people lost 5 years of their life to say imprisonment, that would also be a tremendous tragedy.
Another thing that's important to remember is that even if the disease doesn't kill a person, it can seriously disrupt their life and create incredible discomfort. We've all heard the reports of people who had few or no symptoms, but there are many more people who get extremely ill, sometimes to the point of seeking medical attention. That has huge economic implications in and of itself even without a single death. Even diseases such as cold and flu have a huge impact on the economy and people's quality of life due to things like decreased productivity. So even without a single death a disease that is more infectious than the flu and that there isn't a vaccine for would have a huge affect on the economy. Particularly given how fast it spreads. There would be a huge proportion of the public sick at once putting people out of commission indiscriminately of how important a service they or their industry provide.
Prev
Linear Mode
