At this moment in time nothing is more important than trying to save as many lives as possible, and rightly so, but I do hope someone has properly weighed the benefits and drawbacks of any potential long-term downturns. Perhaps the long-game might well involve preparing people to make the tough call and admit the currently unthinkable, that some people are just too close to death already to be 'worth' sacrificing everything else for.
Self inflicted greater good.
The discrepancy in lethality was known before the virus came to shores. China provided data.
Quite a lot of tension going on between economic competitiveness and conservation of life.
A knowledge not put to use: the virus discriminates according to age.
Fighting a discrimination by discriminating is out of the scope, two wrongs do not make one right.
Discriminating elder people by requesting they stay at home very early, by focusing on withdrawing them from virus exposure before the rest of the population would have been some sort of reverse racism.
Most elder people are pensioners, the drain on the economy would have been less than larger containment measures.
Concentration of wealth makes it so that stores are owned by large groups they could have been publically invited to organize schedules in the morning when the viral charge is expected to be lower for elder people etc
In the meantime, segments of population that are known to be resilient to the virus could have joined forces to ensure an efficient insulation from the virus for the elder ones.
Instead of having this massive lockdown, more gradual ways could have been set in motion by discriminating people as the virus discriminates.
As a result of a failure to coerce properly people, when this crisis maybe is at its first 1/6th, an essentiel segment of population is put in conditions of failure, people involved in healthcare instead of getting up to save lifes, get up to determine if it is within their means to save lifes based on their patients condition. They must determine who lives and who dies.
Only 1/6 in, already a situation of systemic failure, it is going to be a rough ride.
One thing to remember: fighting a discriminating virus by discriminating is wrong. It does not work. Every human being in lock down except those who are not in lock down.