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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

In what universe are healthcare experts remotely qualified to understand the economic ramifications of optimizing for health-related variables? They have little to no expertise in economics, government, or other areas whose variables they are massively altering in their quest to optimize the health variables they care about. Apparently they are willing to collapse nations, create millions of homeless, etc. with their advice.

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It is not their job to consider the economic implications. Their job is to advice on the public health implications. This is just advice. Government executives are expected to consider this advice, as well as the advice of economic experts when deciding what actions to take. You could, argue that executives placed undue weight in the concern of the health experts, but that would be a critisism of government executives, not health experts.

Collapse nations, create millions of homeless maybe the short term economic result of the health advice. But it's very highly likely to be a much better long term economic result than not taking the advice.

Your commentary reads as skeptical of the value of the advice of healthcare experts during a pandemic, which, to me, is truly a confusing position for anyone to take other than someone who only understand the splash, and not the ripples, of this global situation.

Economics and government are both taught in many public health programs. It has long been recognized that many public health problems have significant economic drivers. Public health policy analysis has long had cost/benefit as critical.

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