Trading Lives

How many lives were saved by our response to COVID-19? How many lives were lost because of this response? The media has fixated on that first question. That second question has largely been ignored.

An argument can be made that more lives were saved than ended. Yes, we saved the lives of people who were vulnerable to the disease. Meanwhile, we ended the lives of those who were more vulnerable to mental health issues. Are the lives of those vulnerable to mental health issues less valuable just because their numbers are lower?

Our COVID-19 response can be summarized in three words: minorities are expendable. We killed people of one group to save the lives of another based on numbers. If you are part of a smaller group, your life is worth less according to the government.

Of course, harm can be explained in terms other than lives lost versus lives saved. In the United States, well over 300 million citizens were harmed in some form by our response. We shouldn't ignore that.

There are also other ways to look at loss of life. What if we spoke of loss of life in terms of time? Although I don't want to do too much to diminish the value of life, there is a difference between saving the life of someone who would die the next day and saving the life of someone who will live another 50. Also, what if someone who would have had another 60 years only lives another 55 due to stress or other factors that were never fully addressed?

To further complicate things, an argument can certainly be made that loss of life does not have to come at the end of life. If someone put their lives on hold during the pandemic, they aren't getting that time back. Different people handled the pandemic in different ways. Some people refused to put things on hold. Others couldn't live their lives for years.

For the sake of simplicity, let's just say 300 million Americans put their lives on hold for two months. That would be 600 million months of lost life. Divide that by 12, and we lost 50 million years of life. Does anyone honestly believe we saved that much life during that time?

One of the best ways to describe our response to the pandemic is that we didn’t save lives. We merely traded lives. We also put lives on hold, taking away time that people will never get back. Even if you like the numbers, there are serious ethical questions involved. Obviously, I’m among those who disagree with our approach.