Quote:
Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
Thought experiment (and I'm not making an argument, just trying to think this through logically - feel free to fire away...in fact, I think that's the whole point: for someone to tell me I'm not thinking about this correctly*):
We are all more likely than not to become infected, right?
And the goal of social distancing is flattening the curve, right?
And the goal of flattening the curve is easing the stress on health care facilities, i.e., slowing down the infection rate to keep it within the U.S. health care system's capacity, right?
And the goal of keeping things within the U.S. health care system's capacity is to limit/prevent deaths from COVID-19, right? In other words, if the health care system's capacity is exceeded, certain people who have COVID-19 will not get medical attention and will die, and certain of these people's deaths could have been prevented had they been able to obtain medical care. Right?
Are we prioritizing preventable deaths from COVID-19 over other easily preventable deaths? We could easily ban tobacco/smoking - that would prevent (exponentially) more deaths than what we are doing for COVID-19. And it wouldn't be nearly as costly. So, are we saying that people who may die from COVID-19 are more important than people who may die from smoking?
*and I'm not necessarily thinking this way - it's just one thought that has crossed my mind.
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Total tobacco related US mortality is about 500,000 per year, all in (cancer, heart disease, etc.). But much of that results from past use - if you banned tobacco today the number would decline to zero only over 40-50 years. You'd basically get 10 years of life expectancy for the portion of the population that smokes back.
Max. deaths from this round with the TrumpVirus approaches about 3 million.
Assuming high numbers on both, even if you fully eliminate all tobacco consumption, it would likely take more than a decade to save as many lives as we can with good management of this problem.
It's a big fuckin problem.
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