For 10 years, Americans have had access to flu shots that protect against four strains of the virus: two A strains and two B strains. Starting this fall, however, all the flu shots distributed in the United States will contain only three strains, and the change happened in part because of Covid-19.
There needs to be more pushback on the idea that “if we only save one life, it’s worth it”. Everything has tradeoffs. Domestic violence went up because of lockdowns. So did a lot of other social ills.
Was it worth that cost? Yes. Covid at the time was just that bad, and because we didn’t know enough about its infection factors, there were reasonable models that showed it could have been much, much worse than it was. However, that’s a tradeoff argument. Lockdowns did more good than harm. We shouldn’t pretend they did zero harm, and that idea that “if we only save one life” feeds into that.
There needs to be more pushback on the idea that “if we only save one life, it’s worth it”. Everything has tradeoffs. Domestic violence went up because of lockdowns. So did a lot of other social ills.
Was it worth that cost? Yes. Covid at the time was just that bad, and because we didn’t know enough about its infection factors, there were reasonable models that showed it could have been much, much worse than it was. However, that’s a tradeoff argument. Lockdowns did more good than harm. We shouldn’t pretend they did zero harm, and that idea that “if we only save one life” feeds into that.