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Comment by geekpowa | Hacker News Reader

The living complain about the adverse impacts they experienced, while the dead remain dead.

I see this argument a lot but I don't understand it. Are you suggesting the dead people would have been grateful for the policies that didn't stop them from dying? Or are you suggesting the policies didn't go far enough, and if the dead people could complain, then we'd be convinced to implement even stricter policies next time?

I think the argument would be more convincing if there were a group of people who are still alive that could say they would have been dead without the policies. Obviously this is impossible for anyone to say with certainty, but given that it's the corollary of the "if dead people could talk" argument, perhaps that indicates that both arguments are unfalsifiable and thus ineffective.

It's not about what the dead would say - it's about the difference in degree between inconvenience and death.

The implication of this argument is that if people are dying, the government can implement any policy they want with the nominal intention of "saving lives," and nobody has any right to complain about "inconveniences" because they're not dead, unlike the people who died despite the policies meant to prevent their deaths.

While I agree with your statement, I think you might be projecting a little - this is a simple comment, kind of like saying "nothing new under the sun". Not all statements are necessarily prescriptive.

This is used to keep things in perspective when talking about such emotional subjects, not be a final word, I believe

It’s an argument about survivorship bias in any critique of Covid policies that imply Covid response was unnecessarily harmful

My personal pandemic experience was luckier than many . 3 wilderness years of lost time only; of no growth. no loss of business, work , home etc. more importantly I’m alive and so is everyone I love

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