One perspective is that people are tired of getting the short end of the stick. Yet again the young incur an outsized proportion of the cost while the old reap an outsized proportion of the benefit.
In places where health care systems are overwhelmed, medical personnel are having to choose to who let in to the ICU, and they've been choosing to let in those most likely to survive, which tend to be young people.
In such a situation, old people are going to effectively be left to die, and it'll be younger people who are more likely to survive (which they are anyway, simply by virtue of being young).
The only old people that are likely to benefit are those who manage to live long enough in isolation to not get infected before a vaccine or effective treatment becomes widely available... which could take a long time.
you’re thinking of just covid-19 cases. but they compete with all other cases for medical care.
if you come in messed up from a car accident and you need 5 doctors to survive, or those 5 doctors can keep 5 covid patients alive each, you’re going to be left to bleed out. regardless of how young you are.
(i’m not claiming those relative numbers are realistic.)
EMTALA in the US appears to dominate among a myriad other sister regulations in this medicolegal and medical ethics problem space. The decision should be left to the staff on the ground with the details of the situation at the moment.
An unaddressed gap is medical staff on the pandemic front lines without adequate PPE are still shackled by these rules made for a system that is not overwhelmed by a pandemic. These need to be waived for the duration of the emergency.
No, but a person in an ICU bed will need a lot of other services which might be subject to triage. (Remember that "beds" is a shorthand here - it's not a shortage of physical beds that's an issue, it's easy and quick to build beds.)
I suppose it makes sense to have an explicit discussion of this trolley-style problem. Given an choice between $9.6 trillion damage to the economy and the deaths of a million mostly elderly people, which would you choose? An economist following the most recent US figure cited on the "Value of life" Wikipedia page [1] would say this is break even. A particularly selfish young person would say it's a good deal. I personally would not take it, but that might just be my own personal biases.
As with such trolley problems, real life is rarely so clear-cut. If done intelligently, massive loss of life can be prevented, and the economy can find smart ways to adapt.
Agreed. And the frustration is that we are seeing tons of government action to prevent loss of life, but the effort to protect against the economic damage is basically non-existant. Couple a lockdown with something like a moratorium on rent collection and a widespread effort to help feed everyone and it would feel much less one-sided.
It's a CFR of 0% in Korea under 29, and we're still missing a large portion of the population that's already either had it, or has it and is asymptomatic, or has it and is writing their symptoms off as a mild flu. Potentially divide all the numbers by 6 if the other article posted today is accurate.
There's likely to be massive job loss either way. At least this way there's a chance to keep our health care system from being overwhelmed as well.
Either way, we may be looking at an economic depression the likes of which hasn't been seen for a hundred years.
Unfortunately, the current government is very unlikely to offer a New Deal to get us out of it, and it remains to be seen what the voters who survive this pandemic will do about it.
I'm doubtful about your first statement. People are resilient - I find it hard to imagine a maybe 2x increase in annual US deaths causing such widespread and complete shutdown of economic activity.
The estimates that I've seen have ranged from 330k to 10 million deaths in the US.. and that's just directly from COVID-19 alone.
An overwhelmed health care system and lack of medicines and medical supplies is likely to cause even more deaths.
That's not to mention other possible deaths due to the ensuing chaos and social and economic disruption brought about by the above deaths, global political instability, and reduced supply and demand from the rest of the world as it battles this pandemic.
400k people die from smoking related illnesses every year. Can we ban tobacco? How about sugar to prevent obesity related illnesses? I think these measure are reasonable, I think allowing other such stupid things is unreasonable.
How many people will die from climate change? It really feels like unless it is an uncontrolled threat to baby boomers we will not take action on it.
It's true, but it has zero relevance to the fact that people are naturally resistant to being told to make huge sacrifices almost solely for the benefit of another group of people. Particularly at a time when one of the major (pre-coronavirus) world storylines is around the first group of people suffering from the climate decisions made by the older group.
Every generation inherits a world full of the problems created or only half-solved by the generation before it. It's not unique to our generation and it won't be unique to the next one, unless the young people are the first generation of perfect people capable of living their lives without creating a single new problem for the next generation.
The older generation also solved a lot of problems, and gave us great gifts, as did every generation before them, and as we will for the ones that follow us.
It's not productive to try to pit the young against the old, and the GP is right to point out that you too will be old one day, if you're lucky, so it's certainly unwise to reform the system so that it discriminates against the very group you should hope to join someday (and sooner than you would imagine, sooner than anyone wishes), especially considering the alternative.
I think my point is more that the pandemic + this sort of government response inherently pits the young vs old. The government has enacted a sweeping lockdown (unprecedented loss of freedom AFAIK^) that overwhelming hurts people of working age for the benefits of high-risk older people. But where is the help for those that now can't pay their rent or buy enough food? That situation inherently breeds resentment at a time where resentment is already a mainstream topic.
^This matters because it shows that the government is capable of taking dramatic action
> The government has enacted a sweeping lockdown (unprecedented loss of freedom AFAIK^) that overwhelming hurts people of working age for the benefits of high-risk older people.
Be sure to tell grandma how much you care, junior.
> But where is the help for those that now can't pay their rent or buy enough food?
Folks in California are eligible for up to $1800/month in unemployment benefits.
> That situation inherently breeds resentment at a time where resentment is already a mainstream topic.
> people are naturally resistant to being told to make huge sacrifices almost solely for the benefit of another group of people
This has gotta be the most nihilistic thing I've ever read. And I spend time on Reddit.
The ascendance of humanity is due to a) our brains, and b) our aggregating into communities and working for collective benefit. Our entire existence disproves your hyper-libertarian/utilitarian notion.
Then again, clearly some people hold this perverse idea... which explains the random edge lords on Twitter bragging about violating social distancing protocols.
It's not nihilistic at all. It's just human nature proven time and time again over history. Us vs them is a core concept of human society. That's why it's so heartwarming when we see stories of people making major sacrifices for people that aren't part of their family/community.
If you're always agreeable and self-sacrificing, you'll be taken advantage of by malicious actors. And it's not always easy to figure out whether the other person is actively trying to take advantage of you or not.
You aren't thinking of second-order effects.