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I think that too much discussion of the the costs of the lockdown are along the lines of "But what about the economy?!!!" to which, people quite reasonably respond, "people's lives are more important." When it's all couched in terms of "the economy" then it comes over as a plea not to imperil the profits of shareholders and business owners, which is not exactly compassionate.
However, there are a whole load of other impacts, which are much more directly deleterious on everyone's wellbeing. Not just the loss of livelihood for those who are already struggling, but mental and physical health issues, loss of school time for kids etc. etc. I don't think the cumulative effect of these across an entire population of 65 million has really been weighed up against the threat to the sections of the population who are more vulnerable to the virus.
To put it another way, I was discussing this the other day with one of my more pragmatic acquaintances. I put to her the twitter-friendly rebuttal to the Trumpian message (that it's ok to let a few old people die to keep things going), which is "ok, choose which 2% of the people you know you'd choose to die." Her response was basically "if it came right down to it, that's actually an easy decision to make." In a way she's right; it's a decision that we should put off for as long as we possibly can and find every way to avoid making, but if we absolutely have to choose between losing some of the elderly vs. a potential lifetime of mental health problems and educational delay for children across the entire country, it wouldn't be a coin-flip, we know what we'd chose.
ffm-
The problem is we as a society place too much importance on 'life' rather than 'quality of life'. There has been too much focus on preventing short term deaths rather than a long term view of what the post Covid-19 world is going to look like as a result of the measures we've put in place to contain things.
I realise it's not a popular view and losing loved ones is hard but many people who have died will have welcomed death and I know many of my parents elderly friends stuck in care homes who have openly said they wish they'd catch it so it could finish them off. My Grandma always told us 'never leave it too late to die', she always regretted the fact she ended up in a care home. Maybe we'll finally start to have open discussions about euthanasia after this is all over.
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I think some people can’t recognise a strong economy is good for shareholders and health outcomes.
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I would suggest we (as a society) already do aim to protect life ‘within reason’. There will be quiet decisions in care homes every-day that demonstrate that logic. I’m not a life preserving absolutist (that sounds like someone with a life-jacket kink).
I agree. I think everyone is aware there is a huge and unknown cost to this lockdown.
However, and this is what I fear is being missed ... there was an observable normalcy bias prior to lockdown, against lockdown. It conveniently aligned with myopic profit making, ruling-class arrogance and manifested in the over stating of certain science. Cherry picking ‘herd immunity’ gave plausible deniability of a problem. A poor basis for policy. It
probablyalmost certainly cost lives in my (idiot) opinion.There is likely a new bias now. Now that completely mega numbers of people are in a similar, familiar, shared situation. Everyone is frustrated by our unprecedented lack of freedoms. That mass of share experience is huge and very unusual. So this I think is a factor. Other factors;
It’s economically important to lift the lockdown,
It’s increasingly politically expedient to lift the lockdown. I’m sure you can see the danger here?If we lift restrictions in 2.5 weeks time then beforehand I would like to hear why this is manageable. I’d like to hear it from someone credible and those likely directly effected (there are many, but those in the care sector are in the forefront of my mind).
Saffronspokes
GoatandTricycle
miro_o
I keep hearing this.
But not the argument :)