“Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
– Dalai Lama
Knowing how to balance one’s health and wealth, as an individual or as a nation, is an extremely important factor of one’s happiness. One without the other has proven futile since it is not easy to enjoy the benefits of one without having the other. Learning and implementing such balancing acts have become life saving strategies for countries around the world during Covid-19 pandemic.
Countries such as South Korea and New Zealand have shown their ability to fight the pandemic while keeping their economies performing well while others like India and Brazil are paying the price of prioritising the economy and/or their leaders’ political gains over the health by sacrificing their citizen almost at the rate of three deaths per minute.
Even though there are several vaccines that could slow down the rate at which Covid-19 is spreading at the moment, the manufacturing processes seem to be slower than the speed at which the virus is spreading. Virus seems to be spreading faster due to the nature of it and also due to the ignorance of the people who don’t seem to understand the importance of the precautionary measures prescribed by medical experts all over the world.
The latest news coming from India indicates that the ‘double mutant’ variant of the virus is fast spreading and even deadlier than the previous versions infecting even the people who have been vaccinated against it already. In the absence of a cure or even a medicine-based prevention method, policy makers have to rely on restricted movements and behavioral patterns of the citizens in order to control the transmission of the virus. But such measures will create a trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy.
Herd immunity
These decisions, whether to lockdown a country to save lives or implement a set of strategies that will lead to herd immunity with some collateral damage or just let the nature take its course and at least make sure that the economy is not completely destroyed, are neither easy nor should be influenced by selfish political motives. Most of the developed countries made such decisions after extensive discussions and or debates between policy makers and subject experts scrutinising cost-benefit analysis of all available options.
Organisation for Economic Co-orporation and Development (OECD) consisting of 37 member countries including almost all the top economies of the world has suggested that a loss of a productive human life can be estimated to be between US$ 1.5 – US$ 4.5 million. Therefore, as an example, if a country expects to lose US$ 200 billion due to a lock down it should expect to save more than 100,000 lives at US$ 2 million per life to declare that the lockdown is an economic success. If a life is valued at US$ 4 million then anything above 50,000 lives saved would be a success.
There are people in countries such as ours, who would not agree with such calculations and assigning a monetory values to human lives. But the reality is that such decisions are made all over the world everyday. Another aspect of Covid-19 is that about 25% of deaths seem to be people over 70 years of age. Their lives are valued with the assumption that they would have died within the next ten years anyway even if they didn’t get infected with Covid. Therefore, only the value of the ‘quality-adjusted life-years saved’ is counted for such people.
General consensus
If policymakers think about their popularity and or their chances of being re-elected to be in power then they have to factor in the general consenses of the people and analyse how the majority of their constituents prioritise between health and wealth. Even if the statisticians and or the economists show the numbers favoring the economy, policymakers will have to think objectively whether to go by those numbers or to take a risk and priorities saving lives.
Because the other choice, that is, saving the economy, will undoubtedly will increase the number of deaths and most of the survivors will be experiencing the hardships of losing their loved ones which may turn them against the policy makers whom they would hold responsible for those deaths.
Studies done in the US and in some European countries have shown that socio-economic factors play an important role in Covid prevalence and mortality. Two of the most prominent factors were the household income and the education level of the adults. Those two factors themselves were found to be highly correlated.
Poverty is the main barrier for the continuation of their education and the lack of education and money prevent such people from reaching better living standards and access to improved healthcare.
Even in India we hardly see rich people dying from Covid due to lack of hospital facilities and or oxygen.
Therefore, not only the cost-benefit analysis in the economic sense but also the social, cultural, ethical and moral values should be considered when making decisions about human lives, irrespective of the selfish ambitions of the policy makers to be in power after the pandemic and or after the next election.
If the decision is to safeguard the economy then, who benefits the most by that decision? Would that decision make more poor people lose their lives while the rich makes more money? If the policy secures the wealth over health of the nation then is it the public wealth or the private wealth that is being safeguarded? Has the decision been made with the consenses of the medical experts, economists, sociologists, legal experts, political scientists and community leaders? Does party politics have anything to do with the decision? These are some of the questions the public should seek the answers for, before they make any judgement about these decisions and the policy makers who are responsible for those decisions.