r/science • u/umichnews • 1d ago
Psychology U-Michigan study finds most Americans prioritized preventing child abuse, domestic violence, and deaths linked to economic hardship over preventing additional COVID-19 deaths during lockdowns; researchers say these preferences highlight the need to balance disease prevention with other societal harm
https://news.umich.edu/americans-prioritized-preventing-lockdown-harms-over-covid-19-deaths/39
u/tert_butoxide 23h ago edited 23h ago
Well.... this tells us what people's gut reaction is when forced to make a trolley problem-style policy decision in an online questionnaire, with the benefit of hindsight (re: how the pandemic played out). And when given specific numbers but without the ability to ask clarifying questions or get context for those numbers (how were they arrived at, etc).
It's an insight into how we think about this stuff but I'm not sure this is exactly a basis for policy.
From the methods, the specific questions asked:
Each of the two-option choices that we presented participants began with the statement, “Pretend you are a government decision-maker, and you need to decide which of the two outcomes you will focus on trying to prevent. (For reference, there are 330 million people living in the United States right now). Which ONE outcome would you choose to prevent?”
The two choices for each item were presented in random order. The choice to prevent lives lost to COVID read the same in each of the four outcome-prevention items: “Prevent 300,000 Americans – 225,000 of whom are over 65 years old—from dying of COVID.” The comparison choices for the three initial items are as follows. CM: “Prevent 97,000 incidents of child abuse among American children.” IPV: “Prevent 2,000,000 Americans from experiencing an episode of domestic violence.” Financial decline: “Prevent 150,000 Americans of all ages from dying due to the ripple effects of an economic decline.”
The fourth outcome-prevention item's comparison choice was “Prevent 97,000 American children from experiencing an episode of child abuse, AND prevent 2,000,000 Americans from experiencing an episode of domestic violence, AND prevent 150,000 Americans of all ages from dying due to the ripple effects of an economic decline.”
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u/Relax_Dude_ 1d ago
This is a classic, 'I dont care because it didn't affect me'. If you or a loved one had a massive stroke or heart attack or needed an emergent procedure and weren't able to get it or your care was delayed because hospitals were full from covid patients, your opinion would be very much different.
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u/Wall_of_Wolfstreet69 15h ago
The hospitals were bursting and care for non covid people was also heavily affected. If you don't put harsh rules into place that situation gets so bad that the whole system collapses.
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u/ScentedFire 21h ago
Public health did its job. The other concerns are the province of a functioning state with safety nets.
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u/umichnews 1d ago
I've linked to the press release in the above post. For those interested, here's the study: Pandemic tradeoffs: US residents’ perceptions of detrimental outcomes associated with COVID lockdowns (DOI: 10.1111/asap.70025)
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u/Effective_Factor1661 1d ago
From that link:
Summary
In sum, most participants chose to prevent the adverse outcomes associated with COVID restrictions–rather than COVID deaths–in each choice they encountered. Generally, both those who did and those who did not have experience with the adverse outcome, both conservatives and liberals, and both people over and under 65, chose to prevent the adverse outcome associated with the COVID restrictions rather than COVID deaths. In only one case was there a reversal, with older adults very slightly (51%) preferring to prevent deaths from COVID over deaths from economic decline.
That's interesting. I'd expect people over 65 to be more concerned about COVID deaths than other adverse outcomes.
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u/lanternhead 1d ago
I think most 65yos (and pretty much everyone else) would willingly die a decade early if it meant that young people could avoid having their future career and education messed up. I certainly would
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u/Vox_Causa 21h ago
Notably you won't vote Democrat to prevent child abuse or make sure education is decently funded.
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u/More-Dot346 1d ago
You can look at the per capita death, all cause and death from Covid comparing Sweden and Norway during Covid. Norway had tough lockdowns and Sweden very little. And the all cause mortality is basically the same, although Covid mortality was higher in Sweden.
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u/kanguhrus 23h ago
What conclusion can we draw from comparing the two countries’ responses?
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u/More-Dot346 23h ago edited 21h ago
Lockdown saved few lives but cost the world roughly $10 trillion, really sucked.
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u/ScentedFire 21h ago
Sweden's leaders admitted themselves that they should have locked down more because they did suffer effects from refusing to do so. Stop lying.
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u/DismalEconomics 9h ago
If a group of researchers were actually interested in studying the effects of lockdowns…
There are 195 countries on earth..
Which gives you 18,915 unique pairs of countries.
Imagine I have a potential sample size of 18,195 people…
But then I throw out 18,194 people, because I just want to focus 1 person ….
If I’m even mildly serious scientist , why in the f*** would I do this.
Now imagine I’m working for a think tank … now why do think I used such obviously BS study methods ?
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u/Jingtseng 15h ago
They also highlight some deep unsettling problems with the culture that need to be addressed rather than “made allowances for” in disease response
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u/Electrical_Top656 22h ago
And how much of that was because of right wing conspiracies and rhetoric?
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u/laziestmarxist 3h ago
A bunch of billionaires and business owners didn't care if people died as long as Line Goes Up so they invented a sob story about how you Must Work Through COVID or some madman might beat his wife and child daily and some people fell for the propaganda so hard they still believe it 5 years later.
What about all the imaginary children and wives that will get beaten daily once the Madman loses his job due to the economic slowdown?
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u/ma-cachet 1d ago
Ah so everyone admits they’re eugenicists, cool.
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u/RepentantSororitas 21h ago
That is crazy you think that is the conclusion from this study.
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u/ma-cachet 20h ago
Thinking some people should die or become disabled from a preventable disease because they don’t want to prevent the disease from spreading is eugenics. Thinking a section of the population should be sacrificed for the economy is eugenics. My biggest take away from the pandemic and the push to “back to normal” is how absolutely pervasive the ideology that some people are disposable is and all it takes to justify disposing of them is any small inconvenience or deviation from what they want to do. People prefer Covid deaths because they see those victims as more disposable due to likely being disabled or of a “lesser” health condition, saying they should die over another group is literally eugenics and that’s my point.
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u/spin0r 16h ago
Hundreds of thousands of lives per year could be saved by banning personal vehicles from being driven on public streets, but of course we don't do it, because the economic impacts would be pretty bad, and it would be extremely inconvenient for a lot of people. I notice that no one seems to claim that allowing people to drive personal vehicles on public streets is eugenics.
Most people don't think, "these restrictions are not worth it because they only protect people who are disabled or chronically ill". They think, "these restrictions are not worth it because they might save 1 out of every N lives while inconveniencing the other N-1". And for a sufficiently large value of N, it stops being worth it for them personally.
Reasonable people can argue about the numbers, of course, and the magnitude of the inconvenience.
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u/RepentantSororitas 20h ago
Depression is also a preventable disease.
Abuse is not an "inconvenience"
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u/ma-cachet 20h ago
There are other solutions to all of those other factors though. We could have creative solutions as communities to take care of each other and certainly our government should have stepped up to make sure everyone had basic needs. Seeing this as an either or at all is part of the root problem in my opinion. There was only one way to prevent Covid spreading, everything that resulted from the lockdown should have been addressed as it became evident. Abuse certainly isn’t an inconvenience, but neither are disabled people.
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u/RepentantSororitas 20h ago
There are other solutions to all of those other factors though.
Solutions that were out of reach by preventative measures during the pandemic.
We could have creative solutions as communities to take care of each other and certainly our government should have stepped up to make sure everyone had basic needs.
Saying we could doesnt mean jack
everything that resulted from the lockdown should have been addressed as it became evident.
Some things are just impossible if you lockdown. There is no getting around that. Like young children that were in school during 2020 are just fucked.
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u/Vox_Causa 21h ago
Trump is a child rapist and ran on throwing briwn kids into cages and "erradicating" trans kids.
Nobody on the right sincerely cares about the wellbeing of children.
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u/The_grope_gatsby 1d ago
Not enough has been done to look back on the actions that were taken with the impact it caused in other areas.
Most went too far for no gain
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