What is the Value of Life, Pt. 7: Health & Medicine

Summary: Take A Listen It’s September 2021, and the world remains in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. We didn’t want to be here. Global leaders assumed earlier this year that we would be past this thing by now. After all, we have vaccines that have the ability to severely reduce the rate of infection and seriousness of the disease. Logic says that once vaccines are available, infection rates should go down. But that’s not reality, is it? Mamta Murthi, the World Bank's Vice President for Human Development said just last month, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/podcast/2021/07/30/-absolutely-unacceptable-vaccination-rates-in-developing-countries-the-development-podcast#">"</a>The situation that we see right now is absolutely unacceptable because a large part of the world remains unvaccinated and this is a danger for all of us." Globally, approximately 27.6% of people have received at least one shot, but among poorer countries, including most of the continents of Africa and South America, the rate is something in the neighborhood of 1.1%. [<a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/podcast/2021/07/30/-absolutely-unacceptable-vaccination-rates-in-developing-countries-the-development-podcast">Worldbank</a>] According to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html">the CDC</a>, the current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (153,246) increased 4.9% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (146,087). The current 7-day moving average is 123.6% higher than the value observed approximately one year ago (68,533 new cases on July 20, 2020). <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/08/health/delta-variant-in-kids/index.html">Children are getting hit especially hard</a> this fall, and Idaho’s situation has gotten so bad that hospital officials there are having to make the difficult decision to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/07/covid-delta-variant-live-updates/">ration care</a>. Against this background, having good health seems that it would hold an extreme amount of value. Not being sick, not being immunocompromised, being vaccinated, and having reliable access to healthcare arguably should be a desirable advantage that elevates one’s personal value enough that we would all desire to pursue it. Who doesn’t want to be healthy? Yet, around the world, millions of people who have access to vaccines are turning them down. They’d rather take horse dewormer, which is proven to not only not work but to be dangerous when consumed by humans. As city and state leaders are once again talking about mask mandates, the same people who are unvaccinated are claiming that such public health policies violate their personal freedom. This leads us to question who holds the responsibility for maintaining the value of health? Does it all fall squarely on the shoulders of each individual? Under that line of reasoning, it would be up to everyone to find their own cure to whatever ails them. Does the state have a vested interest in keeping the populace healthy? If so, where’s the line between dictatorial control and acting in the public’s best interest? What is the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals, and caregivers? Is it their fault when people die? Knowing how socially and politically sensitive this issue is at the moment, I’m not going to pretend to be objective. If our aim is to base our decisions on the truth, then we have to disregard personal opinions and desires and look at hard definitions and verifiable truth. That may not play well with everyone reading/listening to this,

What is the Value of Life, Pt. 7: Health &amp; Medicine

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What is the Value of Life, Pt. 7: Health & Medicine