Scold: "You're killing grandma!"
People are not thinking very clearly about this problem. There is a population that is relatively immune to the virus. The young and healthy have a very low risk of death or serious complications. Older people and people with risk factors are many times more likely to die. What's good for one group's interests is bad for the other group's interests. But society as a whole can only really have one policy with respect to quarantining the young and healthy.
It turns out there is a useful tool for thinking about this kind of problem. Obviously we shouldn't be picking whatever policy happens to favor ourselves, just because I'm me and I like things that benefit me. We need to pick the policy that's optimal from the point of view of society as a whole. You should answer the question about quarantining young people as if you didn't know whether you were young or old. You should try to disregard any knowledge of who you actually are. Imagine a cosmic roll of the dice will randomly reassign your identity after the policy decision has been made. This is a powerful tool to discipline your thinking. You can use it to actively root out any self-serving bias, whereby you back-fit an argument to the conclusion that suits you. This is the Rawlsian veil of ignorance.
I presented this as if it's a conflict between young people who want to be free, damn the consequences, and old people who are worried that crowds of mingling young people might spread the disease to them. But actually people are pretty altruistic. Young people are very much worried about their grandparents. I have personally heard many young and healthy people express concern for their elderly relatives. Some of them described to me their personal efforts to avoid contact with them, and some voice these concerns in defense of government imposed lock-downs. On the other side, I have heard older people saying essentially, "We don't want this from you, and we'd never ask it of you." Some of them would not have their children or grandchildren give up their livelihoods.
The veil of ignorance should lead you to think about what it is you actually want at various stages of your life. On the one hand, we do have our selfish wants and desires. I want to socialize. I want to attend public events and eat at restaurants and take my small children to filthy indoor play-places, which are surely hotbeds of transmissible pathogens. But we also want things for our loved ones. I certainly don't want my parents to get this virus. That's a selfish desire, too. But we can take that a step further and think about what we will want at later stages of our lives. I hope my kids grow up to be successful adults. That's a selfish desire, not an altruistic one. Everyone wants that for their own children, and they want it like they want a satisfying meal, not in the sense that they want to solve world hunger. They don't think of resources spent in pursuit of their children's well-being as charity. It's consumption. Money spent on your child's tuition is money spent trying to get something that you want. Most of us don't wouldn't selfishly sabotage our adult children's careers in return for trivial benefits to ourselves. The health benefits would have to be quite large before a typical parent would say, "Yes, I'll take that from the younger generation." Young people should be contemplating not just how much they want their older relatives to survive the pandemic, but what they would want for their adult children at a later stage of their life.
Imagine your elderly self sitting at the kitchen table, contemplating your adult children and perhaps young grandchildren losing their social lives and perhaps being unable to work (as many adults aren't). Another hundred-year pandemic has hit. There is some benefit to you of locking down the young, in that there are fewer people milling about and spreading the virus. Even though your relatives may be making heroic efforts to avoid getting you sick, more sick young people means a greater chance of any given elderly person getting sick. That's true because we can't create perfect separation between vulnerable and low-risk populations. But the benefit to you comes with a cost, and it's one you might not be willing to pay as a parent and grandparent. If this hypothetical makes you feel guilty, you should probably reassess the wisdom of locking down young people. "I don't want my elderly relatives to get sick" isn't much of an answer here. They might want something different for you, if it were up to them. You should be able to viscerally understand this with a little bit of introspection.
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This whole post is side-stepping the possibility that it might be better for the elderly if the young simply get the pandemic "over with" from their point of view. I think there is some wisdom to this idea. I actually think these past two and a half months have been an enormous wasted opportunity. We could have been allowing children to go to school. They have a negligible rate of fatalities or serious complications. Immune-compromised children or children who live with elderly or sick parents could remain home if they don't feel safe, and we wouldn't demand that elderly teachers or support staff mix with them. We'd have had more covid outbreaks by now, but a large fraction of the population would come out of it with immunity. We wouldn't necessarily have "herd immunity", but we'd have these epidemiological fire-breaks interspersed through the population. Suppose the virus flares up again with things as they are now. If the virus gets into a school, a lot of people will get it, probably long before anyone realizes there's a problem if there is asymptomatic spread. One might then reasonably ask, "Why were schools shut down for so long, just for it to happen again? What was accomplished other than moving the inevitable forward in time?"
Robin Hanson has run some simulations that suggest exposing the young is a good idea. I don't know enough to certify that he's right, I just wanted to point to a more rigorous version of the "expose the young" argument. If quarantining the young is counter-productive from the point of view of the elderly, then obviously that changes the cost-benefit considerations I try to outline above.
It turns out there is a useful tool for thinking about this kind of problem. Obviously we shouldn't be picking whatever policy happens to favor ourselves, just because I'm me and I like things that benefit me. We need to pick the policy that's optimal from the point of view of society as a whole. You should answer the question about quarantining young people as if you didn't know whether you were young or old. You should try to disregard any knowledge of who you actually are. Imagine a cosmic roll of the dice will randomly reassign your identity after the policy decision has been made. This is a powerful tool to discipline your thinking. You can use it to actively root out any self-serving bias, whereby you back-fit an argument to the conclusion that suits you. This is the Rawlsian veil of ignorance.
I presented this as if it's a conflict between young people who want to be free, damn the consequences, and old people who are worried that crowds of mingling young people might spread the disease to them. But actually people are pretty altruistic. Young people are very much worried about their grandparents. I have personally heard many young and healthy people express concern for their elderly relatives. Some of them described to me their personal efforts to avoid contact with them, and some voice these concerns in defense of government imposed lock-downs. On the other side, I have heard older people saying essentially, "We don't want this from you, and we'd never ask it of you." Some of them would not have their children or grandchildren give up their livelihoods.
The veil of ignorance should lead you to think about what it is you actually want at various stages of your life. On the one hand, we do have our selfish wants and desires. I want to socialize. I want to attend public events and eat at restaurants and take my small children to filthy indoor play-places, which are surely hotbeds of transmissible pathogens. But we also want things for our loved ones. I certainly don't want my parents to get this virus. That's a selfish desire, too. But we can take that a step further and think about what we will want at later stages of our lives. I hope my kids grow up to be successful adults. That's a selfish desire, not an altruistic one. Everyone wants that for their own children, and they want it like they want a satisfying meal, not in the sense that they want to solve world hunger. They don't think of resources spent in pursuit of their children's well-being as charity. It's consumption. Money spent on your child's tuition is money spent trying to get something that you want. Most of us don't wouldn't selfishly sabotage our adult children's careers in return for trivial benefits to ourselves. The health benefits would have to be quite large before a typical parent would say, "Yes, I'll take that from the younger generation." Young people should be contemplating not just how much they want their older relatives to survive the pandemic, but what they would want for their adult children at a later stage of their life.
Imagine your elderly self sitting at the kitchen table, contemplating your adult children and perhaps young grandchildren losing their social lives and perhaps being unable to work (as many adults aren't). Another hundred-year pandemic has hit. There is some benefit to you of locking down the young, in that there are fewer people milling about and spreading the virus. Even though your relatives may be making heroic efforts to avoid getting you sick, more sick young people means a greater chance of any given elderly person getting sick. That's true because we can't create perfect separation between vulnerable and low-risk populations. But the benefit to you comes with a cost, and it's one you might not be willing to pay as a parent and grandparent. If this hypothetical makes you feel guilty, you should probably reassess the wisdom of locking down young people. "I don't want my elderly relatives to get sick" isn't much of an answer here. They might want something different for you, if it were up to them. You should be able to viscerally understand this with a little bit of introspection.
___________________________________
This whole post is side-stepping the possibility that it might be better for the elderly if the young simply get the pandemic "over with" from their point of view. I think there is some wisdom to this idea. I actually think these past two and a half months have been an enormous wasted opportunity. We could have been allowing children to go to school. They have a negligible rate of fatalities or serious complications. Immune-compromised children or children who live with elderly or sick parents could remain home if they don't feel safe, and we wouldn't demand that elderly teachers or support staff mix with them. We'd have had more covid outbreaks by now, but a large fraction of the population would come out of it with immunity. We wouldn't necessarily have "herd immunity", but we'd have these epidemiological fire-breaks interspersed through the population. Suppose the virus flares up again with things as they are now. If the virus gets into a school, a lot of people will get it, probably long before anyone realizes there's a problem if there is asymptomatic spread. One might then reasonably ask, "Why were schools shut down for so long, just for it to happen again? What was accomplished other than moving the inevitable forward in time?"
Robin Hanson has run some simulations that suggest exposing the young is a good idea. I don't know enough to certify that he's right, I just wanted to point to a more rigorous version of the "expose the young" argument. If quarantining the young is counter-productive from the point of view of the elderly, then obviously that changes the cost-benefit considerations I try to outline above.
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