07-02-2021, 02:29 PM
(07-02-2021, 02:15 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: COVID cases ARE inherently bad. There is no benefit to being sick whatsoever. At a minimum, you can spread it to others who may get more sick. Even typically, most people will feel sick, and this will negatively impact their lives (and yes, also their productivity, for those who only care about economics).
COVID cases which don't result in hospitalization have less harms than those which do, but that doesn't mean they aren't "inherently bad"
You are arguing that eliminating all cases may be too expensive, and that might be the case right now, but other places have achieved and it is beneficial.
Whether it is possible now to eradicate the disease, that's a matter of fact to be determined, the vaccine might be effective enough if widely available enough.
As for "acceptable deaths"...no, none are acceptable. There is no number of deaths greater than zero that we will be like "okay, that's few enough people, we're going to stop trying to improve our response to this."
I agree that there are no ‘acceptable deaths’ — but we are going to have to accept that Covid is going to be with us for a long time, probably forever, and there will be deaths from here on in. This is the same for flu, which kills close to 10,000 Canadians per year, pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses.
Best we can do is continue to find solutions to get as many people vaccinated — but as long as some aren’t reached and others refuse to get a vaccine, this is going to continue to happen long into the future. It is, what it is.