Death Is Bad

 And we should try to have less of it. 

I think that makes me a Utilitarian, but I'm not sure. At any rate, we should minimize death. Ukraine has put out a somewhat ridiculous assessment of Russian deaths at over 11,000. Let's cut that in half and presume some equal level of Ukrainian deaths. So let's say that 11,000 - Ukrainian and Russian, civilian and military - have died in the war. The war has been going on since February 24th, that's 12 days. So let's ballpark the deaths at 1,000 a day. The seven-day rolling average of Covid deaths in America is still 1,500 at a time when we've declared the pandemic is over.

"Good Yglesias" made a reappearance today. He was speaking about how "Defund the Police" is a bad slogan - it is - and bad policy. He also noted that more police means less crime, and less crime mean fewer dead Black people. He crunched the numbers and if we defunded police to the point where we got rid of 99.9% of all police killings of unarmed people, but that also generated a 0.75% increase in the murder rate (it's a very low probability that the increase would be that low) would mean a net loss of Black lives.

Now, obviously war and the killing of unarmed people by the police are worse from a societal and psychological view than dying of Covid or from some awful act of murder, but only a little bit. War is worse, because it disproportionately kills young people, including children. Especially the way Russia wages war. Losing trust in the idea that police are there to protect you has deep societal impacts.

If we are simply talking about people not dying, then we should properly evaluate policies to make fewer people die. The retreat from masking is basically giving up on getting America's stupidest people to get a damned shot. I get that. Focusing on the war in Ukraine because it could lead to a broader war in Eastern Europe is absolutely right.\

But all the sloganeering in the world can't cover up what really kills people.