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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Guilty to not backing up my claims, Don. I'll try to be a bit more clear at least about the assumptions I was making. Thanks for prompting me to clarify them a bit in my own muddled mind:1) We're trying to minimize quality life-years lost.2) Quality is based on health, nuanced by personal subjective value3) wrt this metric, the current U.S. prioritization scheme is much better than a random ordering wrt each of its main components (occupation & age)4) it could be even better if we add in a component which attempts to measure said personal subjective value via a proxy such as willingness to sacrifice something of visible value5) it could be even better than *that* if the 'something of visible value' could itself further the pandemic mgt cause6) prioritization schemes incorporating politically non-viable elements aren't worth considering. This is a severe constraint. E.g. straight cash payments to reserve a place in line fall into this category (unless conceivably the price were *very* high, hence my waffling at the end of my last post)7) contributing one's time *is* a politically viable proxy8) the fact that I buy 4)-7) hopefully clarifies a bit the rationale for proposing personal time spent on pandemic-mgt tasks as such a proxy.

I'm admittedly still guilty of not justifying these claims. The one which appears most worth scrutinizing to me is the 'age' part of item 3). I was quite skeptical about that until I read (from memory, or please correct me) that COVID mortality of 65-75 year olds is 90x that of early-20s, and that of 55-65 year olds is 30x. That plus considerations of political viability and the notion that public health experts do know something left me inclined not to second guess them on this. Which is admittedly more an admission that I was satisficing than a great argument. So, educate me:-)

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JW Ogden's avatar

I do not think this would be much of a problem. Surprisingly few non-blacks claim to be black when applying to college even though it would increase their chance of getting into their top choice school.

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