"But as soon as the data support it, we should pursue an approach that balances treatment and protecting the most vulnerable with allowing as many people as possible to live as fully as possible."
How do you balance this with the precautionary principal? Because in the current pandemic of a novel virus, there remain a lof of important and unanswered questions about long term effects on the body, every organ, every system. The literature is replete with both reassuring studies and studies that wave bright red flags, and the science is nowhere near settled, nor will it be for some time.
Let's say that an annual infection has a 10% chance of resulting in serious organ damage over the span of 10 years. In 10 years time will we wish we had done more or less to protect ourselves from that risk? In 20 years time what will the health system and the economy look like? While dignity and life in the here and now are critically important for population well-being, time and future well-being must be weighted in the analysis.
The current approach to the pandemic falls into a lot of the same expediency traps that climate policy does, and I am very interested in how we can improve our calculus of both with more projection and future weighting.
It is somewhat misleading to write of the dollar value of life or health. It makes sense as a means of comparing where to invest resources, using dollars as a means of comparison but it isn’t the same as saying that a life is worth $5,000,000. Actually I suspect that there are a great many people who would sell their lives at that price for the benefit of their families but there are no buyers. Just as in the marketplace money has no intrinsic value, it serves as a convenience to avoid having to barter for everything. A very important convenience. Similarly in decision theory it functions as a way to compare resource use. How much to invest in seat belts if each one saves 0.001 lives per year. Or how much would it be necessary to pay people to smoke cigarettes.
"But as soon as the data support it, we should pursue an approach that balances treatment and protecting the most vulnerable with allowing as many people as possible to live as fully as possible."
How do you balance this with the precautionary principal? Because in the current pandemic of a novel virus, there remain a lof of important and unanswered questions about long term effects on the body, every organ, every system. The literature is replete with both reassuring studies and studies that wave bright red flags, and the science is nowhere near settled, nor will it be for some time.
Let's say that an annual infection has a 10% chance of resulting in serious organ damage over the span of 10 years. In 10 years time will we wish we had done more or less to protect ourselves from that risk? In 20 years time what will the health system and the economy look like? While dignity and life in the here and now are critically important for population well-being, time and future well-being must be weighted in the analysis.
The current approach to the pandemic falls into a lot of the same expediency traps that climate policy does, and I am very interested in how we can improve our calculus of both with more projection and future weighting.
It is somewhat misleading to write of the dollar value of life or health. It makes sense as a means of comparing where to invest resources, using dollars as a means of comparison but it isn’t the same as saying that a life is worth $5,000,000. Actually I suspect that there are a great many people who would sell their lives at that price for the benefit of their families but there are no buyers. Just as in the marketplace money has no intrinsic value, it serves as a convenience to avoid having to barter for everything. A very important convenience. Similarly in decision theory it functions as a way to compare resource use. How much to invest in seat belts if each one saves 0.001 lives per year. Or how much would it be necessary to pay people to smoke cigarettes.