[logicchains]

By pure coincidence our plutocracy is also a gerontocracy. Imagine you're an overweight rich old man who owns a news media company or runs a country, and you hear about a disease coming along that is most dangerous for overweight old men: basic human nature means there's a good chance you'll be eager to take steps to preserve yourself, regardless of the wider cost.

[andybak]

I'm slightly overweight and I'm pushing 50. The risk of death is fairly low but the risk of having a really horrible few weeks (or potentially longer) is fairly high.

And there's plenty of unpleasant stories about long term effects. All in all I'm pretty scared of catching it.

I'm glad you're young and fit and happy to accept the lower risk.

I'm not so happy about your lack of concern for others.

[ben_w]

Taking a more positive interpretation of what @logichains wrote: given that many governments do have a history of letting lots of people die because it’s to expensive to keep them alive, the only reason this isn’t happening now is because it will affect those leaders personally.

[logicchains]

>given that many governments do have a history of letting lots of people die because it’s to expensive to keep them alive, the only reason this isn’t happening now is because it will affect those leaders personally.

AIDS is a good example of this. It's more deadly than coronavirus, but because it was seen as a disease of gay people, governments initially invested extremely little in treatment or stopping the spread. According to WHO, 32 million people have died of AIDS since it appeared, and most of those deaths would have been prevented with easy access to and faster development of the antivirals now used to treat it in rich countries.

Malaria is another one. It kills hundreds of thousands of people each year (mostly in Africa), and is largely preventable by relatively simply approaches like mosquito nets. For a small fraction of the trillions of dollars involved in trying to stop covid19, most of these fatalities could be prevented.

[logicchains]

>I'm not so happy about your lack of concern for others.

Are you concerned about the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs and businesses? Losing your job is a pretty horrible experience too, especially for the low-income groups who are most affected by the lockdown. What about the people whose mental health has been shattered by forced social isolation; "A year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks": https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-duri...

[andybak]

Yes and those are part of the cost/benefit equation which needs to be carefully (and continuously) considered.

In fairness I guess I was reacting less to your specific comment and more to the chunk of this community that seems to think anyone under 60 should be running through the streets with joyous abandon.

[logicchains]

> Yes and those are part of the cost/benefit equation which needs to be carefully (and continuously) considered.

This I agree with. I'd argue however that most countries have done a terrible job of it, e.g. nobody has published a cost-benefit analysis expressed in some kind of comparable unit like QALY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year). Seems most analysis either only looks at the cost or only looks at the benefits, or makes no attempt to quantify them. Maybe it's not politically appealing to put a number on human lives, but that's what public health officials routinely do when dealing with other issues, because otherwise it's impossible to make consistent comparisons and judgements.

>more to the chunk of this community that seems to think anyone under 60 should be running through the streets with joyous abandon.

This is a consequence of the lockdowns that some people anticipated. I.e. much like making drugs illegal isn't necessarily the most scientifically effective way to reduce drug usage, forcing everybody to stay at home isn't necesssarily the best way to keep everyone at home. People forced into something are less likely to comply for a long time than people who decided to do something of their own free will, or were otherwise persuaded to.

[machinehermit]

The problem though is that people under 60 running through streets with joyous abandon could be what actually causes the least amount of total death in the long run.

Keeping most of the population who is not at risk from developing herd immunity is lengthening the time of exposure for the people who are at risk.

Just the fact we haven't updated our strategy at all after getting data on the age distributions is pretty bad.

[andybak]

All the outcomes I've seen that reach herd immunity involve an unacceptable amount of harm - both in deaths to at risk groups and in terms of suffering across the board.

While we may have to face this outcome I think it's too early to do so until we have more data and a deeper understanding of the disease.

In the UK I get the impression that the population is more cautious about loosening the lock down than the government is. I think other countries are the same. The US might be the outlier here.

[giantDinosaur]

Is it not generally the rich sharply criticising lockdowns? My impression has been mostly the capitalist class + workers who need to work to not starve are in favour of opening up as quickly as possible. Is my impression wrong?

[econcon]

In India tho, rich people demanded lookdown. Specially Bollywood celebrities.

[082349872349872]

In Switzerland, on one side we had unions who said "OK, no May Day parades this year", and on the other side we had bank CEOs who collected donations from their entire management team and took part in videos whose message was "all for one, and one for all".

eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLx4cVJW10

(Koch may be retired now, but don't think we're out of the woods yet — we're still in double digits)