04-01-2021, 02:46 PM
(04-01-2021, 02:32 PM)hollodero Wrote: I agree with you, on Corona specifically, but just for thought I want to add that we all, at some point, are inclined to put the economy and/or everyone's comfort over saving human life. It's always a debate about scope, not about principle. How much economic or societal damage is worth how much life.
Case in point, we wouldn't go into full lockdown modes and halt the economy to fight the flu, even if that would save several lifes a year. (This is not me comparing Corona to the flu or claiming we should open up in Covid times as well.)
Part of the issue was the early framing of the virus as "basically the flu" which has shaped a lot of the public sentiment. People are always tough to move off their initial beliefs so people who dug in early on the flu narrative were never going to move off of it. If you would have told them that one year later it would have caused the same amount of deaths as about 10 years worth of breast cancer, even after lockdowns and massive efforts to contain it, the response by the general public would probably have been different.
Why would it have been different? Because breast cancer advocates have done a really good job of the PR around breast cancer. It's one of the reasons it raises so much money for research, it was positioned well early on and seemed like a "worthy" cause. Amongst cancers, some are treated and funded far more seriously than others because of how well they were positioned in the public eye. Could you imagine people walking around saying that the economy wasn't worth damaging to save people from breast cancer? Of course not, because you would be cast out of society.
