[harrybr]

What is the duration of a "natural life"? For someone with a disability? For someone born with an autoimmune disease? For anyone except the young and fit?

The comment was offensive because it defines a segment of society who the author feels does not deserve to live.

[jMyles]

It seems that your qualm is not actually with the author, whose phrasing is not unusual at least to my eye, but with the very concept of age-adjusted mortality as a metric.

Public health in concerned in part with:

1) Giving years to life 2) Giving life to years

In order to be able to draw conclusions about the relative risks of particular epidemics (whether caused by an infectious pathogen, or lifestyle, or many other causes), it is necessary to determine how much life the epidemic is taking (via projections of age-adjusted mortality in the subpopulations in question), and the degree of detriment in quality of life that occurs beforehand.

Generally speaking, if an intervention can save lives of a cohort who is likely to life 50 more years on average, it is viewed as more valuable than an intervention that can only save lives of a cohort who is expected to live 5 more years on average.

These are absolutely reasonable and mainstream discussions that happen all the time in the relevant fields.

[harrybr]

This conversation is not about an abstract trolley problem of years to life / life to years. It's about reality today.

The post I was quoting ended with "Why do we still have these silly mandates?? How much longer do people want to do this?"

The issue at hand is whether a person is willing to get vaxxed, wear a mask, observe local mandates and do various other things for the benefit of others - particularly those who are clinically vulnerable. It really is offensive to refer to someone who is clinically vulnerable as "at the end of their natural lives anyway".

If, as a society, we can do a few unselfish things, this will reduce the burden on health systems so people who need care can get it. An over-burdened health system is one that can't service anyone, regardless of the source of their problem.