The tricky business of valuing lives

Many people wonder whether the aim of flattening the Covid curve is worth the cost of the lockdown.

But they daren’t say that because all they get is abuse from people so say that lives are more important than money and you can’t put a price on human lives.

In fact, we do that all the time. An expensive new by-pass may reduce accidents in a busy town. But how much should we spend on it in the hope of saving one life? Remember, every pound spent on that project could be spent on other things we value, such as teachers and nurses.

Or again, a speed limit of zero would save 1800 deaths each year. But we also value mobility and the other benefits of transportation. We have to balance these values when we set the limits.

Even our National Health Service balances the cost of a treatment against the extra years of quality life that it might buy for a patient.

The lockdown will reduce infections and deaths. But it also generates escalating bankruptcies, uncertainty, worry and misery. Perhaps the doctors, when they recommend extending things for another 12 or 18 months, are only seeing half the story. It’s time we had a wider debate on our wider values, and how they might be balanced.