Coronavirus

[FatmanG]

This thread has been quite an eye opener for me not really in relation to Bens topic either. The opinions on things as important as violence being used for discipline to the stereotyping of a person from which supermarket they shop at. Some really intelligent and articulate people with some let's say 'strong' opinions.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

My wife has just been to the bank and building society, both closed, and only open for certain days with limited hours. This will cause increased customer numbers during those periods making social distancing more difficult. As my wife said, they send out enough emails about services that they offer, why not send out emails detailing opening hours.

Nigel.

Thanks for the notification, Nigel. I've just checked my bank's website; limited opening hours for most branches on Monday to Friday, closed weekends, other branches temporarily closed.

 

[RogerS]

You seem to be advocating an equation where a human life has a monetary value and that if the monetary value is too high than that human life is allowed to take their (probably limited) chances.

Do you not think that is reality?
Human life most definitely has a monetary value.
But actually that wasn't my point, my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

That has to be one of the most offensive posts I've seen on this forum.

 

[sploo]

You seem to be advocating an equation where a human life has a monetary value and that if the monetary value is too high than that human life is allowed to take their (probably limited) chances.

Do you not think that is reality?
Human life most definitely has a monetary value.
But actually that wasn't my point, my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

That has to be one of the most offensive posts I've seen on this forum.

It's not a nice thing to read, but I couldn't argue against it from a factual point of view.

Indeed, the advice for doctors has been to prioritise treatment for those most likely to be feasible to save (given that there won't be enough intensive care kit for all). I wouldn't want to be the one faced with making that judgement call.

 

[Trevanion]

I think there's a very real monetary value on human life, how much taxes you'll pay out through your life time.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Putting a value on a human life is uncomfortable, but normal practice for even the UK government.

I understand that for safety related expenditure the "value of prevented fatality" is around £1.8m. I assume this gets applied in considering and prioritising (say) road and rail safety improvements.

 

[Andy Kev.]

........ my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

Which again misses the point. We aren't saving the lives of older people......we are reducing the immediate pressure on the NHS by spreading the impact of the disease over a longer period. This enables the NHS to better look after the young as well as the old. Roughly the same number of people will still die from Coronavirus.

There's a lot to that. Effectively we're doomed to wait until the real game changer, an inoculation or an effective drug is produced.

Incidentally, I'm half hoping that I'm one of those lucky people who only gets a mild version of it. Yesterday I got a cough out of nowhere and even felt wobbly for an hour or two. The coughing started at about 9 am and the wobbliness was around lunchtime but all symptoms were gone by about 11 pm. It seems too good to be true but I hope that was it. I'm still going to stick with all the currently recommended precautions though.

 

[MusicMan]

........ my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

Which again misses the point. We aren't saving the lives of older people......we are reducing the immediate pressure on the NHS by spreading the impact of the disease over a longer period. This enables the NHS to better look after the young as well as the old. Roughly the same number of people will still die from Coronavirus.

Though a side effect of slowing down transmission is that a vaccine may become available (thus lowering deaths). Alternatively, it also gives time for research on better treatment - there are some (seemingly - to the non-virologist such as myself) unrelated drugs that are showing promise in aiding symptoms. Way out of my knowledge area, but a potential positive in slowing infections down.

Yes to both MikeG and Sploo. The seemingly unrelated drugs were in fact selected by a highly scientific process: structural molecular biology. Once the molecular structure of the virus was determined by Chinese scientists, which was quite quickly done and circulated internationally, virtually all known and approved drugs were structurally checked against it to see if they might fit (literally - the right molecular shape to lock on to part of the virus, and the right chemistry to inhibit its operation). One of my colleagues (an Oxford professor) was involved in this search. She told me that of these hundreds of thousands of drugs, three hits were found including an antimalarial drug (probably one of the ones there is so much noise about currently, but I don't know the details). Research on these started immediately in all countries with supplies and capabilities (and they were immediately banned from export) for clinical trials. Though they are already approved for human use, they still need to be tested in the coronavirus case to see if they work in fact, and at doses that are not otherwise harmful. This is certainly the best hope before a vaccine is developed by one or more of the 20 -ish teams working on this world wide. Who are cooperating well.

So the lockdown both spreads the load on the NHS and offers a hope that recovery rates will improve as these drugs come on line, assuming they indeed have a positive effect.

MikeG, I hope your recovery and that of your wife is still proceeding well?

 

[Andy Kev.]

Putting a value on a human life is uncomfortable, but normal practice for even the UK government.

I understand that for safety related expenditure the "value of prevented fatality" is around £1.8m. I assume this gets applied in considering and prioritising (say) road and rail safety improvements.

Very true. If you aspire to manage health nationally and with finite resources (inevitably the case) you will always be faced with highly discriminatory decisions about who is awarded a higher risk of dying and who will get the full benefit of treatment.

 

[RogerS]

Do you not think that is reality?
Human life most definitely has a monetary value.
But actually that wasn't my point, my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

That has to be one of the most offensive posts I've seen on this forum.

It's not a nice thing to read, but I couldn't argue against it from a factual point of view.

Indeed, the advice for doctors has been to prioritise treatment for those most likely to be feasible to save (given that there won't be enough intensive care kit for all). I wouldn't want to be the one faced with making that judgement call.

He's not talking about prioritising Covid-19 care as far as I can see. It reads more like a generic statement of principle.

 

[sploo]

Yes to both MikeG and Sploo. The seemingly unrelated drugs were in fact selected by a highly scientific process: structural molecular biology. Once the molecular structure of the virus was determined by Chinese scientists, which was quite quickly done and circulated internationally, virtually all known and approved drugs were structurally checked against it to see if they might fit (literally - the right molecular shape to lock on to part of the virus, and the right chemistry to inhibit its operation).

In my ignorance of the science I'd assumed there was some technical or biological reason why those drugs were chosen - many thanks for the explanation.

One of my colleagues (an Oxford professor) was involved in this search. She told me that of these hundreds of thousands of drugs, three hits were found including an antimalarial drug (probably one of the ones there is so much noise about currently, but I don't know the details). Research on these started immediately in all countries with supplies and capabilities (and they were immediately banned from export) for clinical trials. Though they are already approved for human use, they still need to be tested in the coronavirus case to see if they work in fact, and at doses that are not otherwise harmful. This is certainly the best hope before a vaccine is developed by one or more of the 20 -ish teams working on this world wide. Who are cooperating well.

Without wanting to give away personal information I don't have the right to expose; I understand Oxford has a strong virology research centre? It's not my wife's medical field, but she's formerly of those woods.

 

[Jake]

You seem to be advocating an equation where a human life has a monetary value and that if the monetary value is too high than that human life is allowed to take their (probably limited) chances.

Do you not think that is reality?
Human life most definitely has a monetary value.
But actually that wasn't my point, my point was that by saving the lives of older people now we could inadvertently be killing more younger people in the near future.

That has to be one of the most offensive posts I've seen on this forum.

The only way I can understand this statement from is that it must be based on your offense at the suggestion that the ones you want to mow down with an Uzi have any monetary value.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I was going to write something about how economic downturns also cause higher mortality rates, and therefore by crippling the economy to save some people, other people would then be sentenced to death in their place. However, according to this: (https://www.genre.com/knowledge/blog/do ... te-en.html ) during economic downturns there is a decrease in deaths overall, despite a rise in suicides and murders, because of the reduction in vehicle accident deaths.

I can't work out which proposition is more depressing.

Note it also doesn't cover the long-term affects of poverty on health, looking purely at the two years after a recession.

So in conclusion, the best way for the government to keep us safe is to lock us all up, and throw away the key. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[MikeG.]

.......MikeG, I hope your recovery and that of your wife is still proceeding well?

I'm 100%, albeit easily fatigued, thanks. My wife is a day or two behind me, but much improved. She is complaining bitterly and often about having lost her sense of smell (welcome to my world). We both have a strange metallic taste in our mouths. We'd take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays as a substitute for what we've just been through.

 

[Rorschach]

He's not talking about prioritising Covid-19 care as far as I can see. It reads more like a generic statement of principle.

It's both, monetary value on human life always applies and always has. It's not nice, but it's true.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

The value of life is an economic value used to quantify the benefit of avoiding a fatality.[1] It is also referred to as the cost of life, value of preventing a fatality (VPF) and implied cost of averting a fatality (ICAF). In social and political sciences, it is the marginal cost of death prevention in a certain class of circumstances. In many studies the value also includes the quality of life, the expected life time remaining, as well as the earning potential of a given person especially for an after the fact payment in a wrongful death claim lawsuit.

As such, it is a statistical term, the cost of reducing the average number of deaths by one. It is an important issue in a wide range of disciplines including economics, health care, adoption, political economy, insurance, worker safety, environmental impact assessment, and globalization.[2]
...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

 

[D_W]

I was going to write something about how economic downturns also cause higher mortality rates, and therefore by crippling the economy to save some people, other people would then be sentenced to death in their place. However, according to this: (https://www.genre.com/knowledge/blog/do ... te-en.html ) during economic downturns there is a decrease in deaths overall, despite a rise in suicides and murders, because of the reduction in vehicle accident deaths.

I can't work out which proposition is more depressing.

Note it also doesn't cover the long-term affects of poverty on health, looking purely at the two years after a recession.

So in conclusion, the best way for the government to keep us safe is to lock us all up, and throw away the key. What could possibly go wrong?

Economic decline does generally yield lower mortality in the short term. I don't know why that is, but it has always been the case as far as I can recall.

I once posed that question to someone who worked at a large casket company figuring that lower economic means would yield higher mortality and the the person in question quickly answered that mortality drops in economic decline (that obviously affects their business - choice changes, too - crematory businesses here in the states do better in an economic downturn, despite the reduced number of overall deaths).

That's something maybe nobody ever wanted to know!!

 

[D_W]

Putting a value on a human life is uncomfortable, but normal practice for even the UK government.

I understand that for safety related expenditure the "value of prevented fatality" is around £1.8m. I assume this gets applied in considering and prioritising (say) road and rail safety improvements.

There is an even more simple version of this occurring in the states where high viral load critical patients (who can be resuscitated) are being viewed as a potential threat to health care workers. The issue goes back to saving others instead of the person in question.

More money is spent on end of life here in the states because it's compensated, but the threat not of revenue, but actual ability to save other lives by keeping doctors (nurses, etc) healthy and beds used for people with a better chance of surviving is popping up.

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/0 ... -patients/

End of life care (separate from the covid issue) is superb, but it has become extremely expensive and seemingly designed transfer inheritances away from descendants. That might sound a bit absolutist, but a neighbor here did nothing to protect assets and had a long-term memory care issue (can cost $150K a year for specialized care, sometimes more) and blew through $1M of lifetime savings, relatives sold the house of the individual in case and blew through most of that. I guess they felt it was worth it, or maybe they didn't consider it at all. The difficult decision in that case would be placed on relatives.

 

[MusicMan]

.......MikeG, I hope your recovery and that of your wife is still proceeding well?

I'm 100%, albeit easily fatigued, thanks. My wife is a day or two behind me, but much improved. She is complaining bitterly and often about having lost her sense of smell (welcome to my world). We both have a strange metallic taste in our mouths. We'd take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays as a substitute for what we've just been through.

That's very good news. Thanks for letting us know.

Keith

 

[Woody2Shoes]

.......MikeG, I hope your recovery and that of your wife is still proceeding well?

I'm 100%, albeit easily fatigued, thanks. My wife is a day or two behind me, but much improved. She is complaining bitterly and often about having lost her sense of smell (welcome to my world). We both have a strange metallic taste in our mouths. We'd take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays as a substitute for what we've just been through.

Great news, until she regains her sense of smell you'll just have to make sure she doesn't do anything which could accidentally set the house on fire: e.g. welding, er, cooking, er ummm ......