What's an acceptable death rate look like for you? Anecdotally does that number change if we're talking about your life, or the lives of people you are responsible for?
That's an easy thing to say if the cost you pay is working from home and not going out on the town.
Not so easy when the cost is the end of a small business you worked years to build.
We make arbitrage like this when setting pollution laws, or speed limits. The issue here is that we don't know the cost of flattening the curve. We know that GDP is strongly correlated with life expectancy, and the loss of GDP worldwide will have important sanitary impact, but it's hard to quantify this.
That being said, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to flatten the curve. Considering we don't have the data to make the right decision, we use a greedy algorithm. But I'm quite convinced that we'll be worse off in the long term. Incidentally, we choosing to save old people over poor people.
http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-cr...
Which is a shame.
It’s like the one example where some back of the envelope yet informed numbers might improve public policy vs the status quo..blind panic and a livelihood crippling total lockdown.
To put it in perspective, approximately 37,000 people die per YEAR from automobile accidents in the USA
With all the measures already in place, and strong possibilities of under counting COVID19 has already killed more than 50,000 people in less than 4 months.
A better argument would be banning obesity. ~300,000 people die from obesity related diseases every year
From cities? You'll find that many will agree with that.
I do agree with your general point though.
In California it looks like more than 200 jobs could have been lost per life saved and that's a lot of human suffering. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/ca...
Allowing it to spread kill many more people and overwhelm our healthcare system would result in a worse economy in the medium term
http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-cr...
On one side - we cannot stop the economy to contain the virus, because that would turn into every person having to grow their own food and carry their own water with a bucket from the river. Many many people would also die.
On the other side - we also cannot ignore the pandemic and carry as if nothing is happening because that would over-burden the hospitals to the point that they will not be able to treat people with other issues. Many many people would die as well.
So there indeed has to be a balance. And the question "what price are we willing to pay for saving a life" seems to be on point.
I'm not convinced that such deaths outweigh the lives saved through these measures, but they're still worth mentioning if we want a full picture of the impact.
Also; por qué no los dos? The USA has enough money and resources (and billionaires) to save the lives + not have the suffering (basic income/welfare). That they choose not to might not be the concern of the people who voted for those things but got Trump; they don't want their lives or loved ones to be chosen over 'jobs/economy' just because the people in power are overly greedy and short-sighted.