A very important thing is that % is concentrated among old and people with preexisting health conditions.
Not every death is the same - a 80 year old with weak immune system could have lived 5 years longer without corona, but a healthy 20 year-old dying from cytokine storm caused by influenza has lost potentially 60 years of healthy life - the loss is much worse.
I agree we should consider years of life lost but the figures are a bit higher than they ones you're using. 14 years on average for men and 12 for women. Not 60 years but more than 5.
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75
Not every death is the same - a 80 year old with weak immune system could have lived 5 years longer without corona, but a healthy 20 year-old dying from cytokine storm caused by influenza has lost potentially 60 years of healthy life - the loss is much worse.
In a triage situation, where you have to decide between different people dying, such choices are unavoidable or necessary. But I want highlight that you are talking about this stuff to say that it's OK to plan for the death of "a 80 year old with weak immune system could have lived 5 years longer" versus no death at all. And that's not OK.
But those discussions happen all the time. If there is a drug that can extend the life of this person for 5 years but it costs X - should it be covered by society ? At what X does it become unacceptable ? The highest numbers I've seen argued are in the 200k/year but realistically it's much lower depending on the country.
Well, there are two kinds of choices that are generally considered radically different.
One choice is providing some opportunity for further life beyond what's expected. That's generally considered something society likes but isn't obligated to provide. Society doesn't obligate it's member to spend money developing some miracle-extend that gives someone five more years.
The other choice is taking life that would normally be expected. That is something that society very much frowns on. If you could protect someone and you don't do it 'cause it would cost you money, you may wind-up in jail for murder.
Very quantitatively oriented people seem to have a hard time grasping why there's a difference here. But I think it's very rational in an evolutionary game-theoretic compact kind of way. Everyone is a member of society and values everyone else's life highly, more highly than immediate material things though maybe not more highly than other people's lives. This gives member of society basic security - you are thinking my insulin might worth just stealing and selling on the open market, me murdering you first might be my best strategy. You can see where things break down? The "social contract" is kind of the way around this.
You can self isolate without quarantine measures in effect so your point isn't that strong to me and you are ignoring that one of the biggest destabilising forces in history is economic downturn. US-China relations have been bad for a while now and both sides are throwing blame at each other as a populist policy (China has a US origin story allegedly). If this pushes the economy in to a global depression who knows what will happen s few years down the road. Taiwan, Korea, plenty of places that could erupt if things become politically unstable - both in the US and China.
Self-isolating vulnerable populations is almost impossible. You're talking over 100M in the US.
And not doing anything (pretend it's just the flu) will result in 50M dead world wide. Everyone worried about a new depression should realize one is going to happen no matter what we do now. The only thing we can do is act in a humane fashion.
Your number is highly suspect. About 16% of the US is 65+, or roughly 50M.
Where do you get your 50M worldwide figure? When a new flu appears, Neil Ferguson claims his 3K lies of undocumented C code forecast 200M will die. These numbers are all speculation and worse predictors than throwing darts at a board behind your back.
One third of the US population is considered at risk due to comorbidities. With over 328M people in the US, that's roughly 100M.
If you look worldwide, there are 7.8B people. If herd immunity takes 60% of the population becoming infected, that's 4.6B infections. With an IFR of 1%, that's 46.8M deaths. 460M hospitalizations (where possible).
Even say the IFR is overstated as some like. Say it's a magnitude less, comparable to the flu at .1% Now you are down to 4.7M deaths, but still the 460M hospitalizations. Still one of the most serious crises in the last 100 years.
OK, so how many "influenza death equivalents" are we looking at? What's your metric for how bad this is? I mean, I think that's a little ghoulish, obviously, but if people really want to make this argument I'd really like to see the kinds of well-founded numbers that the experts are producing. Medical ethics is hardly a new field, after all. You'd think someone would have pulled some analysis off the shelf.
Instead, the people pushing "these people would have died anyway" seem to be almost exclusively political actors (or their proxies on social media sites like this one) with a goal of either defending the inaction of the current administration or pushing a policy goal that necessarily sets the virus loose on the public.
But if you really want to make a numerate case for not trying to save the old and sick, I'd genuinely and carefully read it.
I think there are already such calculations for approving drugs on public health programs - cost of treatment vs years of quality life provided.
So you would need to estimate the number of years lost vs the economic damage. This is impossible to get right on both sides but at least it gives you a framework.
Basically everyone who dies from this has a preexisting condition, but basically everyone in the US will develop at least one of the big three (hypertension, diabetes, or obesity) at some point.
We don’t cry about the millions of heart attacks that are easily prevented. We definitely don’t Give a damn about some person dying of cancer when they are smokers. Why are we drawing a distinction here?
You chose to eat X and not exercise for years/decades. A middle class American has enough education and purchasing power to know and behave accordingly.
Does it suck? Yes, but i find it incredibly unfair and hypocritical towards the rest of the world by ruining their lives based on the extremely old and or fat/unhealthy population.
To be perfectly fair (and for the record I'm very much not among the "sacrifice the old and weak" set!): not as much as covid.
The elderly and immunocompromised obviously die more to almost every illness. But the effect is really pronounced with covid. And most other viral infections tend to kill children at higher rates too, and covid very notably does not. It's definitely an interesting aspect of the disease, though it's produce a kind of horrifying calculus among a lot of the right wing in the US.
Not every death is the same - a 80 year old with weak immune system could have lived 5 years longer without corona, but a healthy 20 year-old dying from cytokine storm caused by influenza has lost potentially 60 years of healthy life - the loss is much worse.