[robocat]

> while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway.

The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail]

I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the parent comment: “I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.”

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid

[ravenstine]

That's not how anyone should assess risk. You can't take an average and assume that it applies to everyone. The elderly hare far more likely of losing 10 years off their lives than young people who are very unlikely to lose 40+ years off their lives. For instance, the chance that I will die from COVID at my age and health are, for all intents and purposes, 0%, according to the CDC. It would be ridiculous for me to take a statistic that is more apt for the sick and the elderly and use that to determine the course of my life.

By the way, the truth can be very callous. I don't think it's particularly useful for you to point out how callous someone sounds on the internet unless the other person has some demonstrable intent of cruelty. We all know that we have the potential to sound like bad people through text online.

[rcpt]

The metric you're looking for is QALY "quality adjusted life year". It's studied a lot in health economics but generally disregarded wrt covid because we don't have 2060's actuarial tables yet.

Yes there is evidence that 10-30% of covid infections have not resolved at 6 months

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

which is roughly what SARS 1 looks like (and those people are still sick). But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

[robocat]

“A study published in the Journal of Public Health finds that for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost.” - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.h...

> But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

That isn’t relevant to the 10 year statistic although it is an interesting point - you are saying the final result for years of life lost due to Covid could be a higher number than 10 years (after we get to finally tally the numbers in the decades to come as people die). Depends on how you paint your statistics I guess. [para edited to add clarity]

[robocat]

The point I made is that an average of 10+ years lost is strikingly different from the canonical “nearly dead elderly don’t matter” argument that I see far too many people use (and which my comment replied to). Obviously averages are very poor indicators when a distribution is wonky, and it is preferably to deep dive into the data.

Note I am all for people doing whatever they want with their own lives - if you want to go to a Covid party I would love to support that. I love taking certain risks myself.

However, when the choices of one age group can kill my mum, dad or friends, I would hope we agree to serious restrictions to help prevent that. With engineering balance to the compromises, given that prevention techniques cause significant human costs.

I am from New Zealand, so I can resoundingly support everyone acting together in concert to protect everyone else (as most kiwis did, with a good outcome for us).

[Clewza313]

I'm sorry if it comes off as callous, but we're comparing incidents of mass death here and disability-adjusted life years is how insurance companies and demographers do it. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a good thing that 500k people have died from COVID in the US, but simply that having same number of young, healthy people getting gunned down in the Battle of the Somme is almost any measure objectively worse.

[solosoyokaze]

Do you really not know any young people who have been permanently damaged by COVID? I know multiple people in their 20s and 30s that spent weeks in the ER and will never be the same. I'm always surprised to find people who think the lockdown is excessive. COVID is absolutely no joke even if you're young, it's not the flu. Not even close, you don't want it.

[AndrewUnmuted]

My anecdotal experience is the opposite of yours - everyone I know in their 20s and 30s who had a positive COVID-19 test got through it within a week and it was about the same as the flu.

If my anecdata is irrelevant, then so is yours.

The only people I know who have had permanent damage from COVID-19 in this age range, have all had their trauma caused by excessive lockdown policies.

You know what's even less of a joke than COVID-19? Our histrionic, insane, and completely violent overreaction to it.

[solosoyokaze]

> You know what's even less of a joke than COVID-19? Our histrionic, insane, and completely violent overreaction to it.

Quick question: how would you propose dealing with a global pandemic? Social isolation seems like the most common sense solution, since in 2021 we know how disease is transmitted and how to deal with that.

[AndrewUnmuted]

Social isolation may be the best solution. Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I am not going to entertain further the notion that we have locked people into their homes, given trillions of dollars to multinational corporations, and restricted the lives of everyday people, just because of a pandemic that kills less than 1% of the people infected. This is such an obvious cash-grab and overt attempt to impose further fascism upon people, just like what happened after 9/11 in the US with the imposition of the Patriot Act.

[scubbo]

> If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I'm sorry, I simply cannot let this go unchallenged. Even a moment's thought should demonstrate that that's not the case:

* It may be the objectively-best-solution for society as a whole, but not-best for an individual (for instance, a young healthy individual who is at low-risk for long-term impact for COVID, but who could act as an incubator and carrier to spread it to more vulnerable folks). The overall-harm-done by these free-circulating individuals will, I am willing to bet, be much more than the "harm" done to them by asking them to stay home. * It may be the best solution, but to recognize that as such requires specialized scientific knowledge that the average person doesn't have. Meanwhile, propagandists are free to influence society as they wish with more-easily-consumable (but, possibly, less true) messages. * Similarly to the 2nd point - it may be the right solution, but that might not be obvious until late in the process. In this situation, trusting experts and following their advice earlier will reduce the overall harm done.

The calculus of impact here is "what is the harm done by following advice if it's wrong?", vs. "what is the harm done by not-following advice if it's right?". Folks are free to make their own decision on this, but almost-every analysis I've seen suggests that "staying home" is the massively better choice, _even if_ the global pandemic turns out to have been less-severe than first expected (in fact, the opposite seems to be true). All of that is leaving aside the fact that much of the harm done by isolation could have been offset by basic social welfare programs (stimulus cheques, UBI, etc.)

Contrary to the common American mindset, freedom is not, in fact, always an unalloyed good - especially when incentives for an individual are in opposition to incentives for a group. (ironically, I wrote this summary _before_ reading your second paragraph, but it works even better. Your argument that "a previous social program restricted freedoms in an unproductive and unhelpful way, therefore any social program which restricts freedoms is unproductive and unhelpful" does not hold)

* I'm not assuming that you are American, but I _am_ contrasting my position with a mindset that I have noticed disproportionately _among_ Americans.

[m0deran]

> Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

Do you actually, really believe this? Do you really believe that if that the research studies come out and say “hey stay inside” that everyone will read the studies front-to-back and go “oh, it’s in the public interest for everyone to stay inside”? Is this a thing that you think will happen in America?

> impose further fascism

What is fascism?

[macintux]

Consider this: influenza almost disappeared due to the lockdowns and other measures we took.

Yet 3000 people in the U.S. are dying each day from COVID.

Does that not indicate that this virus is a particularly nasty virus worthy of special measures? That it’s still spreading widely when the flu can’t?

[the_af]

> If it's the right solution, then it will be followed

Social isolation isn't an opt-in kind of measure. Furthermore, the average person doesn't have the background or tools to evaluate whether it works. It's a public health matter, and you do have to follow the advice of the relevant authorities.

This is like the law against drinking and driving in many countries: you cannot decide to opt-out of this restriction. It negatively affects others who do decide to comply with the restriction. If caught, you will be subject to some kind of penalty (such as having your license revoked), for good reason.

[solosoyokaze]

I'm not making any cash on this, and I want the lockdown to continue. Because I don't want COVID and have a rudimentary knowledge of how disease is transmitted.

> Social isolation may be the best solution. Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I think your own statement is proof that this is not the case. We know social distancing works, yet you don't want to implement it.

> just like what happened after 9/11 in the US with the imposition of the Patriot Act.

I agree that governments will always do this. That doesn't make COVID any less of a threat though. The lockdown isn't the only lever of authoritarian control. There's plenty of others you can fight to increase individual liberty. Things that won't put millions of others (and yourself) at risk.

[kelnos]

Not the parent poster, but I still think a bunch of people getting killed in a war is worse than dying from COVID, even if they are literally the same people dying in both cases.

The latter is just nature being nature, and while we can respond in some ways to reduce deaths, it will never be perfect. I get that in some ways that feels worse, because there's a feeling of powerlessness. But the former is humans being shitty and murdering each other in the name of nationalism, land, resources, religion, whatever.

[solosoyokaze]

It's "natural" for humans to fight too, it doesn't make it pleasant. I don't know that war and disease need to be ranked. Both are horrible and humanity has a long history suffering with both.

We now know enough about the nature of disease that we can be somewhat effective dealing with it. If people embrace the science that is.

[selectodude]

I know zero people that have been permanently damaged by COVID. I don't think my social circle is all that small, either.

[rcpt]

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

[robocat]

“Findings: 236,379 patients survived a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Among them, the estimated incidence of neurological or psychiatric sequelae at 6 months was 33.6%, with 12.8% receiving their first such diagnosis. Most diagnostic categories were commoner after COVID-19 ... including stroke, intracranial haemorrhage, dementia, and psychotic disorders.”

It would be interesting to do a relative comparison of physical and psych effects of lockdown versus post-Covid complications. It isn’t clear what the severity for the “33.6%” was.

[rcpt]

> physical and psych effects of lockdown versus post-Covid complications

The control group in that study is people who had the flu during lockdown.

[solosoyokaze]

Consider yourself lucky. Would your opinion change if you knew a few people your age that almost didn't make it?

It's anecdotal for sure, but once you see it with your own eyes it definitely makes you take it seriously.

[selectodude]

My mother died of cancer in her mid-40s. She had me pretty young so I had a front row seat to the entire thing. Terrible, terrible thing to go through. I do nothing to reduce my risk of cancer. I just can't live my life like that. Some people can and do. I wish I were one of them.

[solosoyokaze]

Thank you for the honest answer and personal anecdote. Sorry about your mom.

[graeme]

> If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

I think you missed this part of their comment. They were arguing the deaths weren’t the same kind of deaths as in past catastrophes, but the long term ailments are bad and real.

Though I agree the years lost is bigger than people think.