Q&A: Loss of Life-Years
Loss of Life-Years.
Question
Good evening, Rabbi!
Recently, in the context of lockdowns, the issue of loss of life-years has come up, and it led me to think about a few questions.
The basic claim is that one should oppose lockdowns because lockdowns bring with them problematic side effects such as depression, suicide, lower economic status, fear of seeking medical treatment, loneliness, and the like, which according to certain studies lead to a shortening of life expectancy. And according to a certain methodology, those making this claim say that one can quantify the loss of life-years among the lives of all the young people living in the State of Israel. And when one examines things in terms of loss of life-years, one sees that the loss of life-years from coronavirus itself is far smaller than the loss resulting from the side effects mentioned above. The main reason is that those who die from coronavirus are usually older people who had only a few years left to complete their life expectancy, as opposed to young people who lose many years.
My question is whether (assuming the methodology is correct, etc.) it is morally right to compare death from coronavirus with the loss of future life-years. Because ostensibly one could argue that the loss of a person who is alive now, and right now is actually losing his life to coronavirus, is different from a young person who, theoretically, if he lives on and reaches age 70, will not continue living until age 82 (the life expectancy in Israel).
Put differently: is killing a living person immoral because of the potential years he lost, or perhaps is the very ending of a life the immoral thing, regardless of how many life-years were lost as a result of that killing?
In addition, assuming that the wrong in killing a person is the loss of life-years, does that mean that one should prefer the life of a young person over that of an older person?
P.S. Perhaps this is connected to the topic of one who kills a person with a terminal condition?
I would be very glad to hear your opinion, and I apologize if the wording is not clear enough…
Thank you very much!
Answer
There is room for the reasoning that a young person's life is worth more, although in Jewish law it does not take precedence over the life of an older person. But that is not connected to the question of whether the only measure of the value of life is the number of life-years. I absolutely do not accept that. In my view, that criterion is meaningless. And we have not even begun to discuss the question of how many would have died without the lockdowns (far more than those dying now), so I do not see how such a comparison can be made.