Imagine for a second extending a similar calculus to the entire collective response to the coronavirus. The question is this: What was the remaining value of the lives of mainly elderly patients who might be saved by a sudden and massive shutdown, and the suffering avoided for those who develop a lingering form of Covid affliction, weighed against the cost to the 1.6 billion young people whose education was disrupted and the hundreds of millions who lost their jobs and the tens of millions who would go hungry as a result of worldwide economic disruption?
