I find the smug self-confidence in their own rationality that some on this site show to be extremely off-putting. Most people are not nearly as objective as they think they are.

Saying that it is better for 3 million people to be alive rather than dead is not an emotional appeal, it's actually quite rational if our goal is to not kill people.

Not really and you’re just proving the point. Killing people is an acceptable trade off - you do it every day. Otherwise we’d stop driving, flying or take any risks. You’re appealing to the emotion and doubling down on it.

> Killing people is an acceptable trade off - you do it every day. Otherwise we’d stop driving, flying or take any risks. You’re appealing to the emotion and doubling down on it.

Sure, if you only consider first-order effects from car accidents.

A world without easy transportation is a less well off one and one that likely has more people dying/living shorter lives than our present one.

Saying that someone dying is bad is not an appeal to emotion. I'm a consequentialist - I believe we should implement welfare improving policies.

A policy that saved 3 million people, in my view, is a net good one.

Sure, if you only consider first-order effects then 3 million people saved out of 1.4 billion in China is logical. But, shutting down economy, impacting birthrates, inflation, rioting, suicides, taking away precious years of learning from kids, disruption of careers, dating life, college education, loss of sole sources of income, desperation and depression, etc that has been led by authoritarian governments is not worthy of the trade off if we consider 2nd order effects as you suggest. Not to mention, the biggest one is loss of civil liberties that is the engine of growth.

Perhaps you should practice what you preach.

All of those are because we failed to control the virus in the first place. It's a bit less true now with delta, but those things stopped happening in China precisely because their decisive action was so successful.