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Comment by izend | Hacker News Reader

There is a legitimate debate of: Cause an Economic Depression vs X times the number of yearly deaths.

Note, the Economic Depression would indirectly cause deaths.

For example everyone agreed that not shutting down the global economic was the correct decision in regards to the Swine Flu pandemic which did cause 100,000 or more deaths.

What if it was 1 million projected deaths, 10 million or 50 million?

I honestly do not know the answer but there are individuals who specializes in these decisions.

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Deaths would also worsen an economic depression. Why does everybody forget about this?

Also, an economic depression reduces air pollution which would reduce deaths.

There are lots of factors that would need to be considered. Most people I’ve seen advocating this pov are stopping at the first order analysis.

> Also, an economic depression reduces air pollution which would reduce deaths.

In the immediate term, sure. In the medium term an economic depression would weaken investment, research & development in new green technologies which would increase deaths as the effects of climate change worsen.

Or, it could spur some necessity is the mother of invention innovation for deployment.

Or a million other things could happen.

I am asking that you change your “would” to “could” to properly reflect the uncertainty.

We have a tendency to want to convince people of our views, which gets in the way of making our views more correct. This is challenging to fight, but necessary to learn.

Because most people who don't advocate the POV are stopping at the zeroth order analysis, saying that you're a heartless killer if you want to consider any factors instead of just saving lives.

I can’t correct other peoples flawed thinking. But I can avoid reacting to it when that reaction makes my thinking worse.

Just because someone does something I don’t like doesn’t mean I should base my viewpoint around rejecting theirs.

Consider, sure, but we need to actually consider.

There is no model for any of this, on either side of the issue, and so the off-hand "we need to get back to dating, etc." really does look... heartless. It's just as much a zeroeth-order analysis as the other.

Fixing that would mean giving due consideration to the complexity of the situation, at least attempting to define one's assumptions/model, and being explicit about how much loss of life one is willing to accept.

With inadequate measures, this pandemic could rival the Holocaust in number of deaths. There's absolutely a difference between allowing millions to be killed rather than committing mass murder or genocide, but "let's get back to life as usual" does demand justification.

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