Deconfinement: The Price of Human Life
by Jean-Louis Gassée
We’re facing a set of unprecedented decisions: Where, how, and when do we deconfine in order to reboot our economy. Unavoidably, the calculations place a price on human life.
This week’s note was sparked by a conversation with a learned engineer friend. He cut through my lamentation that our country lacks the will to send astronauts to the Moon again. ‘It’s not about will, it’s about our changed estimate for the cost of human lives!’.
In the sixties and seventies, at the height of the race to “conquer” space, we tolerated losses that are no longer bearable in today’s culture. Wikipedia obligingly offers a List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents covering both US and Soviet mishaps. Most memorably and tragically, we recall the seven deaths (each) in 1986 (the Space Shuttle Challenger) and 2003 (Space Shuttle Columbia). In1967, a launchpad fire claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafffee, and that’s to say nothing of the fatalities incurred during training exercises. We also remember the equipment failures that almost doomed the Apollo 13 mission, now passionately memorialized in three formats (paper, tablet, and audiobook — the latter makes a great walking companion).
Today, caution has replaced patriotic passion.
The new reason/emotion calculus reminds me of what we’ve done for — some say “to” — our cars. Specifically, and with apologies for the possible culture disconnect, it brings back memories of the Citroën 2CV, introduced in 1948 but designed during WWII and hidden from occupation forces in a hay barn. I could go to great lengths describing the 2CV’s engineering feats and its adorable minimalism; instead, I’ll quote from the Wikipedia article [as always edits and emphasis mine]:
A 1953 technical review in Autocar described “the extraordinary ingenuity of this design, which is undoubtedly the most original since the Model T Ford”. […] The motoring writer L. J. K. Setright described the 2CV as “the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car”, and a car of “remorseless rationality”.
Compared to today’s people’s cars, such as the Volkswagen Golf and the Toyota Corolla, the 2CV was a lightweight, literally. The 2CV came in at 1,300 pounds while the current Volkswagen Golf (Mk8) ranges between 2,767 and 3,230 lb, and the Toyota Corolla, another worldwide best-seller, weighs approximately 2,888 lb. Despite the lightweight and high-strength steel, glass, and plastics that are available 70 years later, our modern wagons are more than twice the weight of the 2CV. The weight increase is due to a combination of creature comforts and government-mandated safety features.
Safety has become a totem. Compared to today’s eco-friendly vehicles, which must adhere to our current calculus of the value of human life, the 2CV was “dangerous”: It did little to protect its occupants in a collision. Put a bit more starkly, The Greater We has decided that a car is allowed to kill us just so, but not more, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) ratings explain in detail.
A similar risk/benefit balancing act is in evidence when it comes to speed limits. When I came to this country in 1985, Interstate speed was limited to 55 mph (90 km/h, unimaginable for a French driver). It’s now 65 mph or 70 mph on many highways, such as portions of Interstate 5. Over time we decided to accept a certain number of deaths per mile, although discussions of the number isn’t allowed in pleasant company.
Returning to our current health worries and thoughts about our obsession with safety, we can compare the Coronavirus to the 1968–69 Hong Kong Flu pandemic whose impact seems to have been forgotten despite its devastation:
“In Berlin, the excessive number of deaths led to corpses being stored in subway tunnels, and in West Germany, garbage collectors had to bury the dead due to insufficient undertakers. In total, East and West Germany registered 60,000 estimated deaths. In some areas of France, half the workforce was bedridden, and manufacturing suffered large disruptions due to absenteeism. The British postal and train services were also severely disrupted”.
And…
“The H3N2 virus returned during the following 1969/1970 flu season, resulting in a second, deadlier wave of deaths. It remains in circulation today as a strain of the seasonal flu.”
In France, where I lived at the time, the official death toll was 25,000 to 35,000, clearly under-reported given the German tally. Adjusting for population, we can assume the number was closer to 50,000. Today, an equivalent number due to the Coronavirus would be about 68,000 deaths. That’s certainly higher than what France will experience in 2020–2021: France’s fatalities currently stand at approximately 27,500 deaths, the result of (somewhat) strict countermeasures.
In 1969, France didn’t shut down, even with half of its workforce bedridden. Nor did Germany or countries elsewhere. The Hong Kong Flu caused more deaths than are projected for this current pandemic and yet, at the time, no one thought of bringing entire economies to a halt.
Do we value human life more than we did half a century ago? As we start the deconfinement process, as we reopen beaches here and restaurants there, are we consenting to increased fatalities in exchange for a partial restart of economic activity? Naturally, no one wants to say things like “restarting hospitality businesses in state X will cause Y deaths that would have been avoided had we kept those businesses dormant”.
It’s an impossible situation, one in which decision-makers have to weigh the benefits of rebooting economic activity against the deaths that could happen, all without explicitly stating the value they place on peoples’ lives. They have to say their actions are perfectly one-sided, no price to pay. This is true at every level of government, city, county, state, federal.
Deconfinement decisions are unavoidably polluted by inextricable combinations of scientific best estimates a.k.a SWAG, responses to political pressures, to emotions, to electoral calculus often. In the end, these determinations all place an unspoken price on human life — not unlike changing a speed limit or a safety regulation. As our elected officials lift shuttering restrictions, every move is highly visible, criticized from all sides.
I don’t envy the decision makers.
