[rumanator]

> If you do the math, Iceland lost about 120 extra years of life

The problem with "extra years of life" metrics is that they artificially play down the death wave on older segments of the population, as if those dying from covid19 who happen to be older than 40yo should not matter to society.

The consequences of this nonsensical pick of statistics indicators is that a death wave of thousands of people per day that happens to hit harder on the > 40yo segment is watered down with "all this just to gain 3 hours of life" nonsense, as if all the coffins were only piling up because instead of being delivered on scheduled they needed to be delivered 3 hours earlier.

[mewpmewp2]

So someone with 1 day left in their life is equal to someone with 70 years?

It does seem to me that a more just system would consider "time lost" as a metric since surely it can't be binary.

[rumanator]

> So someone with 1 day left in their life is equal to someone with 70 years?

You're the one trying to quantify the value of life.

To me, my parents and grandparents are more important than your 1yo son/daughter, so YMMV.

Still, you're missing the whole point. The point is that it makes absolutely no sense to downplay an epidemic just because it hits hardest on those suffering from pre-existing medical conditions or being over 40. The coffins piling up on makeshift morgues make it quite obvious that the real effect of the death wave is not anticipating death by a couple of hours, and it matters nothing if those doing the dying are sick, old, or disabled.

[mewpmewp2]

So are you saying it's entirely binary? It's either terrible and should be avoided at all costs, or it's no-one dying?

You are bringing out facts such as "coffins are piling up" etc, this fact could be true if in one morgue in two places in the world there were coffins piling up. Maybe these morgues can only handle 5 deaths at once and now there's 5 more for each?

You need to quantify things to understand how bad they are. Otherwise these statements are meaningless.

You are essentially quantifying - any statement you do you is actually quantifying. For instance if you bring out the argument about coffins piling you seem to be considering potentially 10 deaths (which could cause coffins piling) to be the same as the whole world population dying.

[rumanator]

> So are you saying it's entirely binary?

I'm stating the exact opposite: that crudely abusing statistics to pretend that people over 40 don't count for nothing because they will die in a few years is abhorrent, and downplays the real impact of the whole covid death wave.

[randomsearch]

Wow, you’d sacrifice a 1yo to save your grandparents? I find that genuinely shocking.

[simiones]

That is not what was being said - they said that they personally value the lives of their own parents more than the life of someone else's child; this in the context of someone trying to argue that the life of a 1 year old is inherently more valuable than the life of a 60 year old because the 1 year old can expect 79 more years of life, while the 60 year old can only expect 20 more.

And otherwise, assume there is a fire and you are in the middle of a corridor. On one end there is your mother, on the other there is some 1 year old you don't know in any way. Which would you rush to save first? I know I would rush to save my mother before the 1 year old.

[mewpmewp2]

So the implication is that we should calculate the emotional pain value instead of expected years left and act based on that? So if for example the 1 year old in question has no parents because they died due to an accident and no other relatives it means no-one will really mourn this death so we would choose this death over a popular 80 year old person?

[rumanator]

> So the implication is that we should calculate the emotional pain

Wrong, the implications is that it makes absolutely no sense to state that society should just let old people die simply because you're so self-centered that you even fail to register the devastating effect of an epidemic just because you believe it doesn't affect you personally.

[colde]

I think the argument is more akin to not sacrificing anybody, and trying to save everyone.

[mewpmewp2]

But in real world that is not possible. There's somewhere a line you have to draw. How many man-hours would you be willing to spend to save someone who would die in a week anyway?

According to that logic you should have all 7+ billion people working that whole week to keep this person alive.

Would the man-hours spent saving that person have to be exactly the same as saving someone who has further life expectancy of 70 years?

[Gibbon1]

That's not really the choice here. The choice is we squelch the virus and my dad and his grand children get to see each other again. Vs you not being inconvenienced.