LeSving wrote:
We take care of the sick and the old, if for no other reason than because we can and therefore it is the right thing to do.
Excellent post. Absolutely.
This whole thing, as usually in times of crisis, brings up the best and worst in people. It also divides people into those who want to help and show compassion to their fellow humans and those who think they can valuate human lives versus material goods.
@LeSving, excellent post #399. We have proof that what you say hits the nail on the head. For example, some years ago (not too many) there was a heatwave in France which was responsible for the deaths of many elderly people left alone in the larger cities during the summer period. The shame of this event is still part of the French psyche to this day. The idea of choosing to let people die over the economy would be an anathema to most French. The economy has died before and we have recovered as @Ibra wrote WW1 and WW2 for example. Once you or a member of your family have died there is no recovery (and yes I know that is an obvious statement :)
It is all well and good saying save any lives at any cost. But when the actions to save lives take lives, it’s not quite so straightforward.
Historically the banning of DDT is a good one, it almost wiped out malaria but did have side effects. We chose to ban it, and that will have led to millions of deaths.
Peter wrote:
I don’t think so; a lot of “older” people are big spenders
Once retired, they just live of the assets they accumulated, or the income those assets generate. These assets survive, the money just will be somebody else’s to spend…
But as I said – value of life should have nothing to do with the economic contribution of the individual in the remainder of his life. There is enough bad history to tell us that attribution of different values to different lives can lead to horrific results.
@Off_Field we are not talking about actions to save lives costing lives we are talking about saving lives where possible versus saving the economy. The reason the people of Europe have, for the most part, a decent standard of living now is because people born in the 20’s 30’s 40’s and 50’s (the very people that you think can now be sacrificed for the economy) made it so.
I often wonder how much of the banning of DDT at the time it was done really had to do with the side effects, which are an issue but which, according to some people I talked to over the years, could have been managed or because some “big picture” thinkers got worried that without malaria the population in those countries would grow too large for the “civilized world” to “manage”, so malaria was still “needed” to keep the population in those countries under control.
Would the latter be true, it would be one of the larger cases of intentional mass murder done in the name of what actually. However, seeing how today way too many people would be ready to sacrifice masses of people in this crisis to satisfy their own goals, it makes me wonder yet again. Not to talk of those “economic experts” who think that killing off the senior citizens in our society is desirable as it would rectify the financial condition of pension funds.
How did the Khasi of Kalabar put it? “There is no mountain high enough in all of India from which to adequately show my contempt.”
I very much doubt any disease (seen in the last 100 years) would keep any population “under control”. And in the old days 3rd World population density was too low to get an effective spread, anyway. So I don’t think that theory would ever have been valid.
Normally, what drives pharma R&D is whether money can be made from it / whether the product can be patented to protect the income stream. Developing drugs for the 3rd World is not going to make a lot of money. So perhaps a lot of the R&D for a vaccine for this virus will end up being done in other places. Manufacturing can then be done in the usual places.
Historically the banning of DDT is a good one, it almost wiped out malaria but did have side effects. We chose to ban it, and that will have led to millions of deaths.
Except it was never banned except in agriculture, was it. And mosquitoes were becoming resistant so the way in which it was used had to change.
The best way to reduce overpopulation is to educate girls and enable to access family planning services.
Re. healthcare for older people, the counterargument would be Ariel Sharon – 8 years on intensive care at a cost of millions of dollars, without regaining consciousness as far as I’m aware. I gather there are many people from wealthy families in the Middle East who are also not allowed to die. How long could we keep people alive for if we put everyone on a heart-lung machine and dialysis and filled them with antibiotics every day? Even in rich, industrialised nations we could not afford to do this for more than a handful of patients.
There has to be some humane but reasonable balance.
kwlf wrote:
There has to be some humane but reasonable balance.
No argument from me on the cases you mention. There also should be more self-determination for the said people.
However, the current situation, while having a focus on the elderly, is quite different, particularly as it appears that some people would not mind simply refusing medical care to anyone not “productive” or “going to die anyhow”. That on the other hand is an attitude for which I can only express contempt.
Airborne_Again wrote:
If a person with terminal cancer is expected to die within 6 months, gets Covid-19 and dies after 3 weeks. What is the cause of death? What if the life expectancy was 2 months? One month?
COVID-19 of course. If the terminal cancer patient were to get run over by a bus after 3 weeks, the cause of death would be getting run over by a bus, not cancer. Worrying about these edge cases is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
