Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's possible to disagree without going all the way to an extreme like this, and necessary in order to be in harmony with the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? Note this one:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I am not sure you put much thought into this. A life's worth is not infinite, so there must be some value associated with it. If the cost of doing something exceeds the values of the lives it is saving it is prudent to stop doing it. This is not unique to COVID-19, choices like this are made every day. We could prevent a lot of deaths by limiting the speed limit to 15 mph, but we don't because we value quicker transport more than those lives lost.
Also poverty lowers life expectancy. If we are not careful about how and when we open the economy back up, we can cost the hundreds of millions of people months to years off their lives. This has to be weighed against the amount of lives that are being saved right now.
> A life's worth is not infinite, so there must be some value associated with it. If the cost of doing something exceeds the values of the lives it is saving it is prudent to stop doing it.
This gets ugly fast. How much do you value your life versus how much an economist who has never met you does?
Then run that same test on your young child or elderly grandparent.
It might be the best measure we have, but it’s a terrible one.
Yes, it's uncomfortable to think about, but that doesn't change it. Would you like your partner, parents or friends to die in a car accident? Of course not. Do you accept the reality of daily deaths of random people by car accidents as part of the price we pay for the quality of life we enjoy? Most likely yes.
But questioning how many deaths per day by cars would be too much, that's where it gets very uncomfortable very fast. Is it a hundred in the US? A thousand? It's certainly not a million or there wouldn't be anyone left after not even a year, but a thousand? And what if 900 of these would be people aged 70 and over?
It's uncomfortable to think about, even more so to say what number you arrive at, but that doesn't make it a thought crime.
The extent of the lockdowns means foot shortages are starting, and massive numbers of people are facing starvation. We're approaching the point where this may end up worse than if we hadn't done any lockdown at all.
Getting a middle-ground between medical professionals and economists would (hopefully) have avoided the worst of both outcomes.
> Getting a middle-ground between medical professionals and economists would (hopefully) have avoided the worst of both outcomes.
Arguably, that's the job of the policy makers, and worldwide we've seen major failures because it was not carried out as it should (in one direction or the other).
Rich people? How about all the millions of common middle and lower class people whose lives as they know it is completely over as they are now in a hole that it's going to take years for them to dig themselves out of.
If anything a strong economy provides the least marginal utility to the rich relative to the poor. Once you've got wealth, you have the optionality to properly hedge so that you make money on the way up and on the way down (or at least limit losses on the way do).
Sometimes the calculus is that lives will be lost for the better general well being of society long term. We don't eliminate cars and roads and for people to walk everywhere in order to eliminate motor vehicle deaths. We don't ever lock down to prevent deaths from the seasonal flu.
> "Economists need to be part of the planning, so we can determine exactly how many deaths is best" is the worst take anyone has ever had and you should be ashamed.
I hate to go all “what about the flu”, but seriously. Tens of thousands of people die from the flu every year. Think about how many we’d save if we just locked down permanently. Or how many auto deaths we’d prevent if we all banned cars. And yet we don’t do either of those things, because as a society we’ve determined that those deaths are an acceptable tradeoff, for, you know, life to go on.
