The outcome may sound dystopian. But once you put monetary value on a life - I think insurances do around a few million per person - then the economic damage will be worth several lives anyway no matter which scenario you choose. And that kind of calculation does make sense because at some point economic damage starts to translate directly to deaths, at the latest when your food and medical supply collapses, probably sooner than that. So you end up trading some deaths for other deaths.

Of course I'm not saying that anyone has done those tradeoffs optimally, especially considering that those relations probably are non-linear in practice.

But we are nowhere near that point. Issue some Fiat money to businesses most heavily impacted. Reduce the spread of the virus. Save lives. Worry about the money later.

> eugenics

That word doesn't work when describing people who are no longer part of the reproducing population.

they call it deadwood trimming in corporatespeak

It is worse than that - a dystopia is a result of humanity's folly. It being favored is a sad inherent result of "evolutionary" systems where it isn't what is more than what is morally right or wrong much less optimal. It rests upon one dumb tautology: All other things equal things which perpetuate spread more than things that do not. The process while producing quite a bit of emergent complexity is fundamentally dumb.

Self perpetuation is fundamentally based only on the implications of the strategy. If keeping elders alive past nominal utility helps spread well then it is effectively favored. Which may or may not be known ahead of time.

That said by being smarter than it we have both the ability and responsibility for the consequences for decisions to follow or defy its nudges as we can and see fit.