[yodsanklai]

> What's an acceptable death rate look like for you?

We make arbitrage like this when setting pollution laws, or speed limits. The issue here is that we don't know the cost of flattening the curve. We know that GDP is strongly correlated with life expectancy, and the loss of GDP worldwide will have important sanitary impact, but it's hard to quantify this.

That being said, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to flatten the curve. Considering we don't have the data to make the right decision, we use a greedy algorithm. But I'm quite convinced that we'll be worse off in the long term. Incidentally, we choosing to save old people over poor people.

[rat87]

Most economists say we should listen to health professionals and not re-open to early. And that if we do re-open too early its likely to cause more long term damage to the economy

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-cr...

[thedudeabides5]

Most economists have stayed as far as humanely possible from evaluating lives vs GDP.

Which is a shame.

It’s like the one example where some back of the envelope yet informed numbers might improve public policy vs the status quo..blind panic and a livelihood crippling total lockdown.

[leereeves]

That's from a month ago.