Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Peter David Jones's avatar

Yes, there a basic difference between seeing people as useful fir society, or society as useful to people. Under the second view , people can value their lives as much as they like, and order politicians to behave accordingly. Valuing more than the total amount of resources could lead to problems , but below that there is right level.

Expand full comment
citizen15's avatar

Given that the value of a life year is several multiples of income, it seems like we also need to consider quality life years, not just GDP, lost to prevention. If someone can work from home during quarantine, their contribution to GDP may not drop at all but, clearly, they have lost some quality life.

A recent analysis claimed that US Covid deaths accounted for 2.5M lost life years. With a population of about 325M that works out to about 2.8 days per person. I'm pretty sure that most people would have been willing to lose much more than 3 days of lifespan to have avoided the last 7 months of prevention so, clearly, lost quality life from prevention is very large relative to that of Covid deaths when one considers how many more people lose quality life from prevention than die from Covid.

Expand full comment
27 more comments...

No posts