<story><title>Fine, I&apos;ll run a regression analysis but it won&apos;t make you happy</title><url>https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-regression-analysis</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Waterluvian</author><text>It was a hard thing to broach at the time without people frothing at the mouth about how I must be anti vaccine or something:&lt;p&gt;Has there been any attempt to calculate the cost-benefit of all the various measures and how extreme we should go with them?&lt;p&gt;I’m guessing it’s hard to quantify and compare. A lot of things like general depression, isolation, kids missing half a year of school, etc. can’t really be evaluated against people dying. And on its surface it seems obvious: uh, people dying is much worse than any of those things.&lt;p&gt;But if I said that everything we did was to save one life, people probably would generally agree it wasn’t worth it (obviously so: people don’t seem too interested in preventing all kinds of deaths at all costs). What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten thousand? There’s some subjective level where it starts to feel obvious to more and more of us, until a majority of us agree.&lt;p&gt;But do we have any general sense what that number is? How do we decide how much to care? It might seem ghoulish to decide how many dollars is worth a life, but we do it every day.&lt;p&gt;With the data we have now, I imagine we can somewhat quantify this given enough sample jurisdictions with different rules? “Masking saves x lives per 1000.” “Closing schools saves y lives per 1000” etc. And perhaps then we’re able to decide “is x lives worth the qualitative harm done?” Probably.  “What about y?” Maybe not.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slv77</author><text>The cost-benefit calculations in terms of excess deaths are irrelevant. It was clear even during the initial outbreak that policymakers primary constraints were the due to uncertainty about the virus and limits on availability of protective gear and ICU beds. Without protective gear there was no way to reduce transmission without isolation and once ICU beds are at capacity mortality rates double and people are dying in the streets and the medical system collapses.&lt;p&gt;There is no scenarios where the collapse of the medical system is a viable outcome for policymakers that is also compatible with a functioning economy. A collapse of the medical system means non-covid fatalities also increase. Heart attacks, car accidents and childbirth all become mortality contributors.  The most likely outcome of a medical system collapse would be martial law, mass graves, economic collapse and potential collapse of essential systems like food distribution.&lt;p&gt;The idea that policymakers were primarily constrained by the thought of grandpa dying a few years early and weighing it against the grandkids social isolation needs to die.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fine, I&apos;ll run a regression analysis but it won&apos;t make you happy</title><url>https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-regression-analysis</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Waterluvian</author><text>It was a hard thing to broach at the time without people frothing at the mouth about how I must be anti vaccine or something:&lt;p&gt;Has there been any attempt to calculate the cost-benefit of all the various measures and how extreme we should go with them?&lt;p&gt;I’m guessing it’s hard to quantify and compare. A lot of things like general depression, isolation, kids missing half a year of school, etc. can’t really be evaluated against people dying. And on its surface it seems obvious: uh, people dying is much worse than any of those things.&lt;p&gt;But if I said that everything we did was to save one life, people probably would generally agree it wasn’t worth it (obviously so: people don’t seem too interested in preventing all kinds of deaths at all costs). What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten thousand? There’s some subjective level where it starts to feel obvious to more and more of us, until a majority of us agree.&lt;p&gt;But do we have any general sense what that number is? How do we decide how much to care? It might seem ghoulish to decide how many dollars is worth a life, but we do it every day.&lt;p&gt;With the data we have now, I imagine we can somewhat quantify this given enough sample jurisdictions with different rules? “Masking saves x lives per 1000.” “Closing schools saves y lives per 1000” etc. And perhaps then we’re able to decide “is x lives worth the qualitative harm done?” Probably.  “What about y?” Maybe not.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brody_hamer</author><text>In Canada (and likely elsewhere), there were a number of restrictions which were tied to hospital capacity. As the number of available ICU beds dropped: more restrictions were put in place, and vice versa.&lt;p&gt;A lot of emphasis was placed on &lt;i&gt;preventable&lt;/i&gt; deaths. That is; situations where we’re turning away a patient &lt;i&gt;that we could’ve saved&lt;/i&gt;, because we don’t have a bed available for them.&lt;p&gt;I thought this was a solid, intuitive approach. Preventable deaths are really, really unfortunate.</text></comment>