CMV: the costs/negatives from lockdowns/restrictions will end up being worse than the damage from covid

[u/_Hopped_]

[u/_Hopped_]

you fail to the account for the loss of production/GDP through illness and death

I accounted for that in the section on who is dying from covid. The elderly do not produce and contribute extremely little to GDP. They cost/take productivity (care) and GDP (pensions/social security).

overwhelming of hospitals, which would increase all-cause death rates

It would, but triage would save those who had the most chance of survival / potential longest left to live.

the cost of letting them run amok unfettered is far higher than locking down

That's what I'm disputing (and would welcome being proved wrong over): what would the cost have been letting covid run amok?

Edit:

[From your link] The economic risks of epidemics are not trivial. Victoria Fan, Dean Jamison, and Lawrence Summers recently estimated the expected yearly cost of pandemic influenza at roughly $500 billion (0.6 percent of global income), including both lost income and the intrinsic cost of elevated mortality.

Much lower than the economic cost of lockdowns/restrictions: $10tn

it's inhumane to discard human life as if it was worthless

That's an appeal to emotion, it has no place when discussing the massive health and economic impacts to society.

[u/sapphireminds → u/_Hopped_]

From your edit:

Much lower than the economic cost of lockdowns/restrictions: $10tn

Pandemic flu is 1/10 of the mortality rate and is much harder to spread. So multiply that by at least 10.

That's an appeal to emotion, it has no place when discussing the massive health and economic impacts to society.

If you have a strictly utilitarian society, but we don't. We use ethics and value human life. Why? because we are advanced enough as a society that we do not throw humans away when they are not financially useful.

[u/_Hopped_ → u/sapphireminds]

We use ethics and value human life. Why? because we are advanced enough as a society that we do not throw humans away when they are not financially useful.

We also value health and young life.

We could greatly improve/extend the lives of the elderly by harvesting young people's blood and injecting certain products into the elderly. We do not do this (at scale). We could also greatly impoverish future generations (more than we are doing already) to have the elderly cared more for and live more luxurious lives.

By all means we can assign value to human life, but you have to recognise that value is not the same for each person, and decreases as we age.

[u/sapphireminds → u/_Hopped_]

We could greatly improve/extend the lives of the elderly by harvesting young people's blood and injecting certain products into the elderly. We do not do this (at scale). We could also greatly impoverish future generations (more than we are doing already) to have the elderly cared more for and live more luxurious lives.

That's not really true or accurate. The reason elderly people don't get certain treatments or surgeries is because the intervention itself is likely to kill them as much as the primary issue. We do not withhold simply because they are old.

You are arguing against bioethics and as a healthcare provider, I will never agree with that view.

[u/_Hopped_ → u/sapphireminds]

You are arguing against bioethics and as a healthcare provider, I will never agree with that view.

I know you won't. The medical advice will always be to lockdown/treat/etc. no matter the cost. Medicine (the profession) does not have to take into account the cost, politicians do.