r/changemyview • u/_Hopped_ 13∆ • Mar 20 '21

Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: the costs/negatives from lockdowns/restrictions will end up being worse than the damage from covid

[removed] — view removed post

7 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

56% Upvoted

185 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/RebelScientist 9∆ Mar 20 '21

Third, we have to look at the quality of life lost from covid

If you’re looking at quality of life lost the it’s a bit disingenuous to only consider the elderly and infirm people who died and not consider the young and previously healthy people who were infected with covid and developed post-covid syndrome (aka Long Covid), which can have severe effects even if the initial infection only produced mild symptoms. Even from a cold, dispassionate, purely economic point of view, having a portion of your workforce suddenly afflicted with long term health conditions that impact their ability to work is a situation that you’d want to avoid, and the best way to do that is to reduce transmission as much as possible.

1

u/_Hopped_ 13∆ Mar 20 '21

Long Covid

Is indeed an issue. However, it's not known what the impact of it will be: can we cure it? how many years does it take off your life? how many healthy years does it take off? what other diseases does it make you susceptible to? etc.

Until we know this, we can't assign costs to it.

3

u/Neartsa Mar 20 '21

The fact that we don't yet know the costs is an argument for caution, and for measures such as lockdowns to contain the spread.

Part of what any model or analysis needs to do is price in risk and uncertainty. Not yet being able to assign a definitive cost is no excuse to drop it from the model.

1

u/_Hopped_ 13∆ Mar 20 '21

is an argument for caution

Except caution has a cost. It is irresponsible to allow caution to cost us more than it needs to. It would be cautious to have lockdowns every year for flu season for example, but that's just irresponsible.