The covid public policy response, another example of the danger of theism
I wonder what public policy would look like if it were driven by pure utilitarian values instead of model that is I think ultimately tinged with the remnants of a theistic world view. The current policy is driven by the notion that all human life has intrinsic value and that our response to covid is all about preserving those valuable human lives...
but imagine a world where a utilitarian approach to public policy and measures was employed such that public policy was driven by the amount of human suffering and good it causes or preserves?
based on various data sources, it is clear that covid is only a real threat to the elderly and those with underlying conditions (and in fact the elderly who succumb generally ALSO have an underlying condition). In fact it looks like 99% of deaths are among the elderly and/or those with underlying conditions.
the collateral damage in human suffering and indeed death is immense
delayed medical procedures which results in all sorts of death and suffering for many
mental health issues soaring
domestic violence and abuse soaring
the economic consequences
the loss of enjoyment of life
from a pure utilitarian perspective it seems obvious that the amount of human suffering caused by this collateral damage to billions of people far outweighs the suffering by the millions who died or were hospitalised with covid.
public policy based on maximizing good in our world would have simply let the virus do its thing, survival of the fittest at its best, 99% of us would have been fine.
the application of this policy would have been simple, hospitalisation would not have been provided to those over 80 in an effort to preserve capacity in our hospitals for those younger people impacted by covid
I mean really if you live to 80, you've had a good run, is it really worth all the collateral damage to society to preserve the lives of those over 80 whose quality of life is significantly diminished?
but of course this approach to public policy would never gain traction in mainstream society...
and why is that? because ultimately public policy and mainstream society is still driven by underlying beliefs in God and souls and all of that nonsense
we can't just let the over 80's die, that's inhumane! those people's lives have intrinsic value, they can't just be let to die
but isn't more inhumane to cause all the suffering to all of us who are under 80 that the collateral damage of covid policy has wrought...
I think those with purely atheistic views would have taken a very different policy approach to covid, so ultimately belief in God is again to blame for yet another mess...
but imagine a world where a utilitarian approach to public policy and measures was employed such that public policy was driven by the amount of human suffering and good it causes or preserves?
based on various data sources, it is clear that covid is only a real threat to the elderly and those with underlying conditions (and in fact the elderly who succumb generally ALSO have an underlying condition). In fact it looks like 99% of deaths are among the elderly and/or those with underlying conditions.
the collateral damage in human suffering and indeed death is immense
delayed medical procedures which results in all sorts of death and suffering for many
mental health issues soaring
domestic violence and abuse soaring
the economic consequences
the loss of enjoyment of life
from a pure utilitarian perspective it seems obvious that the amount of human suffering caused by this collateral damage to billions of people far outweighs the suffering by the millions who died or were hospitalised with covid.
public policy based on maximizing good in our world would have simply let the virus do its thing, survival of the fittest at its best, 99% of us would have been fine.
the application of this policy would have been simple, hospitalisation would not have been provided to those over 80 in an effort to preserve capacity in our hospitals for those younger people impacted by covid
I mean really if you live to 80, you've had a good run, is it really worth all the collateral damage to society to preserve the lives of those over 80 whose quality of life is significantly diminished?
but of course this approach to public policy would never gain traction in mainstream society...
and why is that? because ultimately public policy and mainstream society is still driven by underlying beliefs in God and souls and all of that nonsense
we can't just let the over 80's die, that's inhumane! those people's lives have intrinsic value, they can't just be let to die
but isn't more inhumane to cause all the suffering to all of us who are under 80 that the collateral damage of covid policy has wrought...
I think those with purely atheistic views would have taken a very different policy approach to covid, so ultimately belief in God is again to blame for yet another mess...
Comments (54)
Let's work that through. If only 4,000 Americans had died of Covid but they were all young (< 60) and had no pre-existing conditions, would Covid be a real threat?
If 400,000 Americans had died of Covid but only 1% deaths were of young, healthy people, is Covid less of a threat?
What about the suffering experienced by those under 80 at the loss of their beloved over 80 community? Or, for those less well-connected, the suffering caused by the guilt they'd feel at having bought their economic well-being at the expense of a whole sector of society?
Which is why we don't just have a utilitarian ethic. It leads to some horrific act and then when everyone is miserable as a result the ethicist says "oh yes, I'd forgotten to include that in my calculations".
I am not sure that theism is at the centre of the debate because it is likely that the policy makers come from many angles of belief. Also, from my understanding of the views expressed by many of that these vary so much. I think that it would be far too simplistic to split the opinions and arguments into being a matter of a theistic or atheist perspective.
Also, I am not sure what you would recommend by a utilitarian approach. I would say that there are competing views on morality and if the utilitarian one had been applied strictly there would be great dangers. It could, taken to the extreme, been about just ignoring the elderly and the vulnerable. The idea of the good of the greatest number is a limited moral yardstick.
If only that were the case. Unfortunately it seems more like the response to covid is all about preserving the GDP.
Quoting dazed
What's your definition of "a threat"? Does an unknown chance to contract long term debilitating fatigue and other neurological symptoms count as "a threat"? Is overworking doctors, nurses and other medical stuff "a threat"? Is asking those same overworked medical personal to perform triage "a threat"?
Quoting dazed
It does not seem obvious to me. For one, it would seem to me we'd have to be able to predict the long term consequences of "just letting the virus do it's thing". But we really can't. And from a utilitarian perspective, if the risk is unknown, you should always assume it's worse than you think.
Quoting dazed
I'm an atheist, and I disagree, so consider that anecdotal evidence against your theory.
Where is the remnants of theism in that, necessarily? How is it that such policy would be impossible if not for theism? It isn’t, of course, for such policy is altogether possible if there never were any such thing as theism, which makes explicit the policy never was necessarily grounded in any degree of theism in the first place. Innate human values are, after all, products of pure reason, and thereby do not require anything transcendent for their logical validity.
Apparently, the thread title and the opening text contradict each other. Or at least, the text does not support the title unconditionally.
I used the adjective "real" before the word threat, the odds of covid causing the kinds of additional complications are so extremely rare (how many under 80 have such complications?) so the force of the overall argument remains.
Quoting Echarmion
what long term consequences are you referring to? the same extremely rare complications you refer to above?
Lastly it is an error in my opinion to lay the current epidemiologically based plan at the feet of theism. Statistics would be a more likely driver.
You do get that there are way, way more folks under 80 than over, right?
Noone knows how common they are with any certainty, which is part of the reason why we should be pessimistic about them. The force of the overall argument does not remain. It cannot remain. If you properly understand utilitarianism, you understand that every consequence needs to be accounted for, so you do need to take this into account. If your argument remains unchanged after hearing about negative consequences, then you're doing it wrong.
Quoting dazed
No, the social, political, economic and cultural consequences of letting millions of people die, apparently at home or in some kind of mass palliative care, burying them in mass graves, and telling everyone they really shouldn't get all emotional about it, since it really was the only rational choice.
And what about the pressures this kind of strategy puts on people? With the virus at high tide, how many people are forced into a decision of going to work and risking their health and that of their families or loose their job? And what if you miscalculated the chance of complications and hospitals are forced to triage the patients under 80? Did you actually consult any statistics and look at likely scenarios for your plan or do you just figure it'll work based on "common sense"?
It's like how a sound argument cannot merely have mostly true conclusions, but neither can it merely be a valid argument, but it must be valid – every step of the argument must be a justified inference from previous ones – and it must have entirely true conclusions, which requires also that it begin from true entirely true premises.
If a valid argument leads to a false conclusion, that tells you that something in the premises of the argument must have been false, because by definition valid inferences from true premises must lead to true conclusions; that's what makes them valid. If the premises were all true and the inferences in the argument still lead to a false conclusion, that tells you that the inferences were not valid. But likewise, if an invalid argument happens to have some true to its conclusions, that's no credit to the argument; the conclusion contains some truth, sure, but the argument is still a bad one, invalid.
I hold that a similar relationship holds between means and ends: means are like inferences, the steps you take to reach an end, which is like a conclusion. Just means must be "good-preserving" in the same way that valid inferences are truth-preserving: just means exercised out of good prior circumstances definitionally must lead to good consequences; just means must introduce no badness, or as Hippocrates wrote in his famous physicians' oath, they must "first, do no harm".
If something bad happens as a consequence of some means, then that tells you either that something about those means were unjust, or that there was something already bad in the prior circumstances that those means simply have not alleviated (which failure to alleviate does not make them therefore unjust). But likewise, if something good happens as a consequence of unjust means, that's no credit to those means; the consequences are good, sure, but the means are still bad ones, unjust.
Moral action requires using just means to achieve good ends, and if either of those is neglected, morality has been failed; bad consequences of genuinely just actions means some preexisting badness has still yet to be addressed (or else is a sign that the actions were not genuinely just), and good consequences of unjust actions do not thereby justify those actions.
Consequentialist models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what is a good state of affairs, and then say that bringing about those states of affairs is what defines a good action. Deontological models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what makes an action itself intrinsically good, or just, regardless of further consequences of the action.
I think that these are both important questions, and they are the moral analogues to questions about ontology and epistemology.
umm, no, half of the hospitalisations are those over 80, take away half the hospitilizations and there is no issue with hospital capacity
I'll admit it is hard to find clear information on this (I wrongly assumed based on the lack of reporting of such complications that it was very rare) so perhaps this is a flaw in the utilitarian argument I've presented.
But I don't think it is the fear of this that motivates public policy, it's more about preventing deaths and survival of everyone that motivates public policy and for me this focus is rooted in archaic theistic tinged beliefs that every soul is sacred..I honestly don't think the collateral damage being caused by covid public policy is worth the amount of good that is gained by saving the lives of those over 80
But it is simply publicly not palatable for a politician to come out and say "we need to limit our medical resources to protect the lives of those under 80 to preserve our way of life and society for those under 80"...and why is that not palatable? because the mainstream narrative is still dominated by archaic beliefs in God, souls etc We must save lives at all cost! There is no deeper analysis about quality of life.
Quoting Echarmion
my argument is that the consequences of letting the over 80's die (come on they've had a good run!) is indeed outweighed by the immense consequences of the collateral damage being done by covid public policy
As I said above, I'll admit your point about covid wreaking more havoc in terms of severe complications could remove the force of the argument...
The obvious and quite huge flaw in this logic is that the limited fatality rate in healthy young people suggests that we need not handle the spread of the pandemic.
But the current character of the pandemic is with people mask-wearing, social distancing, self-isolating and quarantining. You can't use the same number for the spread without these things, because the probability of contraction increases with the number of disease-carriers.
Furthermore there's a phase transition when those with Covid cannot get medical care. We haven't reached such a catastrophic point yet, but that would be essentially ground zero in your approach.
the hospitilization RATE does not alter with the amount of infection, my argument is that the hospitilization rate is low enough in those under 80 that even if the virus were allowed to simply spread the hospitals would not be over-run if we limited care to those under 80
in jurisdictions like south dakota or sweden where there were little to no restrictions, the sky did not fall and they were still treating those over 80
worst case we let it spread and in fact it wreaks havoc among those under 80 such that our hospitals can't cope then we respond with restrictions
our current policy is based on the FEAR of the potential of our health resources not being able to cope
Because most normal people under 80 don't really want their way of life bought at the expense of the deaths of huge numbers of people over 80. Why are you finding this so hard to understand?
I mean there is no question it is a hard difficult choice to make but this virus is forcing is into this position,
do you honestly believe that the good gained by saving the lives of those over 80 (whose quality of life is obviously significantly diminished by that point) outweighs the suffering of the billions that covid lockdowns and restrictions cause?
increased suicides
mental health issues
domestic violence and abuse
loss of livelihoods
delay in surgeries that would otherwise promote life and quality of life
if by "normal" you mean people who believe in God and souls, then you are correct, most "normal" people would not opt for my suggestion..
How are you measuring 'good'?
Yes it does. Once the hospitals are maxed out, or as in your schema simply not employed for Covid, the rate plummets because there's no room for more patients. It becomes a one-in one-out deal.
Quoting dazed
I agree that is the worst case. Kind of weird that you're advocating for it.
yes it's complicated, but I think you know what I mean
are you a theist?
huh?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I am not advocating for it, I am saying restrictions and lockdowns should only occur if we get to such a state...which I don't think we will if we follow the under 80 only suggestion.
Which is what you described as the "worst case scenario", so yes you are advocating for it.
Why on Earth would anyone choose such catastrophic brinkmanship when the worst outcome is so predictable. Your entire argument is based on the behaviour of the pandemic with those restrictions in place. Without them, very different numbers.
No and no. I neither know what you mean, nor am I a theist.
I don't think it is predictable, given what happened in Sweden and other areas with little to no restrictions, where they were also providing care to the over 80's
interesting
I think what is meant by good is "human flourishing" coined by Sam Harris, positive states of consciousness of humans.
The probability of contracting Covid is proportional to the number of people you directly or indirectly interact with, e.g. the number you speak to, the number who touch the same door handle as you, the number who use the same ATM, etc. Sweden has a population density of 25 people per square kilometre. New York has a population density of 40,000 people per square kilometre. Can you see how that will effect the spread of the virus and the measures necessary to contain it?
yes I can see that there will likely be more cases in densely populated areas but this does not mean that our hospitals would in fact become over-run.
I will say that yours and others comments have made me feel better about the policy response and how it is quite complicated and not necessarily driven by archaic beliefs
The UK has a much higher population density than Sweden and its hospitals are already at critical stage despite the tier system.
In fact, the British Prime Minister also argued for a herd immunity approach in the UK at first and the inevitable hospital crisis is the principle reason he U-turned. He also condemned 20,000 vulnerable people in care homes to death, just so you know he meant it when he said it.
I think the consensus is he's a psychopath who just lost himself the next election.
The other problem is that people who have contracted one Covid strain and recovered have gone on to contract another, some have even died from the second strain. Herd immunity is not a given when people travel all over the world.
I'm actually with you on the broader issue of the cult of everlasting life. I would prefer to live in a culture with more dignity and a lower life expectancy, to the extent that I like to think that I won't be one of those who fall into the great void with broken fingernails. But I'm also a person who historically has kept their pets alive beyond their own comfort because I can't bring myself to give the go ahead to vets to put them to sleep. I think family members are probably the biggest problem here. We could fix this with a shift in authority from the family to the doctors as to whether extending the life of an individual has more of a basis than their family being in that cult.
That said, given the strangely high occurrence of mass murderers in the British health service... maybe not here :rofl:
Right. So how do you measure that?
so basically we're fucked with covid, no way around it
fucked if we do restrictions (all the collateral damage)
fucked if we don't (covid will kill and injure many people)
so which is the lesser evil?
no easy answer to that, but I would be happy if policy makes at least turned their minds to a weighing of those alternatives instead of simply not entertaining some policy options which I think are not politically viable in our society due to the continued mainstream belief in God (75% apparently believe in God in the US).
yup no easy answer to that, but I would suggest it's not mere preservation of life (survival) at the cost of lots of collateral damage
There's no upside to a deadly pandemic, for sure. I think my government ought to have shut down unnecessary national and international travel, locked down until the transmission rate was small, and continued to block travel or quarantine travellers to and from countries that were not tackling the pandemic.
The argument against these was capitalism. Shutting down travel would have shut down some airlines. Some airlines folded anyway because of how protracted the pandemic response was. High street stores and hospitality businesses would have folded because people wouldn't be shopping and socialising. They folded anyway because of how protracted the pandemic response was. Not everyone would have been able to run their businesses because schools -- read: state babysitters -- were closed. Now almost a year later people are still unable to run their businesses because their businesses folded. Children won't have gotten an education for six months. Children will have had no education to speak of for 18, whereas keeping the schools closed would have given them the opportunity to adapt to purely online methods instead of being in a constant state of emergency and uncertainty.
The Covid response has been the apotheosis of capitalism in its starkest inappropriateness: short-term answers to long-term problems; the primacy of the business over the citizen; the disregard for anyone, child or care home resident, who isn't spending.
There's no good pandemic outcome, but there are some truly awful ones and we've ticked all those boxes.
Remnants of theism are worth holding on to, if the alternative is what amounts to mass euthenasia. ‘I mean, what’s the problem with letting go of a few old people?’ There are many threats facing humanity which could be solved by the death of a few billion people, if we went down that road. So I think the concept of the sanctity of human life is one of the important legacies of Christianity, not an obstacle to be shoved aside.
Here in Australia, the stats are Cases 28,708, Recovered 25,913, Deaths 909. Obviously Australia has a small population compared to the USA but were deaths here proportional, we would have expected about 4,000 deaths. Early estimates were in excess of 100,000 deaths. There has been an economic cost in terms of loss of jobs, economic contraction and damage to important industries including tourism and entertainment. However Australia didn’t fall into recession and the prospects for recovery in 21-22 are quite good. Meaning, it is possible to contain this disease if the effort is lead by science and society complies with the requirements - both of which characterised the Australian response.
The US obviously made a complete disaster of its COVID response and accordingly enormous numbers of people died, not all of them old and sick by a long stretch. This is partially because of the utterly ham-fisted and criminally incompetent leadership of Trump (‘can we inject disinfectant’) and partially because of the strong anti-science and libertarian individualism in the culture. Neither of which could be addressed by the means the OP suggests.
The whole argument is a nasty red herring.
Tbf you effectively live on a donut, that's got to help. :P
Of course. You guys tend to do things right. We don't, which is why there's something called "the UK Variant" :cry:
(I should own up, also, that where I live is a large house on a large block with a pool, immediately adjacent to a private gym, sports oval, and local shops, so being 'stuck at home' is barely a hardship in my case.)
In fact, your argument seems to suggest that atheists do not value human life, which is a surprisingly bold claim.
There's an easy way to stress test this idea. Remove all the ifs, buts and maybes, and let's ask the question,
Should we kill everyone on their 80th birthday. 'They've 'had a good run'.
In my invincible youth living a reckless life, I wanted to die by 30... And then I hit 30 and realised that's not what I want. I imagine the same is true for 80. My grandma in her mid 70s keeps saying she's ready to go, and at the same time expresses her fear of covid. She's obviously not ready to go.
So my first issue with this argument, is that it's hypocritical for anyone under 79, to argue for the euthanasia of 80 year olds. This is a decision that people over 80 should make.
Secondly, old people have value in society. They posses the wisdom of having lived life. They also paved the way for us, by building the society we live in. They deserve respect, at the very least, enough respect to have earned their lives.
On a side note, why don't we just quarentine the old people, and people who are afraid. The afraid can make a living looking after the old people... In a bubble somewhere. They won't need money, they can't shop, so just send them all our leftovers. It sounds cruel, but it's a better lifestyle for them than letting the economy collapse.
When you hit 80, you have the choice of risking death, or living in the basement with Biden. I'd take the risk, personally.
Maybe check before you make an assumption eh.
If you read more carefully, you'll see no such assumption has been made, and quite deliberately so. I said...
Quoting Isaac
I've bolded the relevant part. It contains no claim whatsoever about what most people over 80 think.
To simplify things, for the ethically challenged.
"Let me get that heavy box for you,"
"No, you're already carrying a heavy load, I'm fine with it"
"Really, I don't mind"...
Etc.
No, it was an ethical point, not a statistical one.
Quoting Isaac
Do I have to keep bolding the relevant words to get you to read them all.
To be as clear as possible, I'm saying that it is not what I think of as normal (ie, a normative claim) for people of one group to want, and so engineer circumstances that, buy their well-being at the expense of some other group.
It is, however, ethically normal to want to sacrifice your own well-being to secure such an outcome for others.
I have a do-not-resuscitate plan and a euthanasia plan lodged with my solicitor, for example.
Don't do restrictions: lesser evil. My vote. It will be messy, it will leave a mark, and it will not be popular, but it will be over relatively quickly. Everyone left will recover, more quickly and will be functionally immune to the virus (as anyone who isn't is dead) meaning they can move forward with less fear about that thing anyway.
Mine starts to kick in at 75, but yes I agree with you here. The euthanasia laws in our country are a disgrace, however, and very difficult to legally circumvent. I'd like to have put in clauses about painless medication in cases where temporary life support might be considered, but apparently I'm told such clauses are difficult to enforce.
I find it sad that our healthcare system will provide care for the entire lifespan, except the very end. Then we utterly fail our patient.
. Quoting Book273
I am sympathetic to this, but it will never take hold and I think it's a huge function of the fact that the significant majority of people still believe in God
I suspect it is fear of death more than belief in a higher power than make people fearful. I have never understood having fear if one truly believes in a higher power. If you believe, at your core, that your God loves you and will welcome you home, what is there to be afraid of?
agreed the logic escapes me