The problem with saying this is that it's incorrect. Many elders suffer during lockdown in the exact same ways and in some cases to the exact same extent that younger people do, including in the ways you imagine: socially, sexually, economically.
Additionally, there are many young people (many of them here on HN) who do just fine during lockdown because WFH and online interaction actually promote their senses of well being. [0]
The insistence with which you have been asserting that young people are being "punished" reveals adherence to an agenda more than an evenhanded analysis of the facts.
I don't think that's fair to the OP. They seem to me to just be describing what they see and feel.
In a cold, utilitarian sense, the ripple effects from messing up a young life are many times more significant. If schooling, work, romance, and childbearing of young people are all disrupted, you can expect to see that in the economy for decades to come (just look at the name "baby boomers" for the opposite case). But, again in the cold utilitarian sense, if the life of someone with 10-20 years left is disrupted, that disruption doesn't last as long.
This friend basically said that if you are young and need to be ventilated you enter ICU with a better lung than older people.
So when you leave ICU you have enough lung left to not die. You would have died with an overwhelmed ICU, though, and you‘ll likely need a long time to get back the health you had before. If ever.
Some young people are benefiting with fewer car accidents. Some old people are having to wait longer for transplants as there are fewer organ donors dying of accidents.
Also fewer middle aged people are having myocardial infarcts.
My children are not so upset that they don’t have to go to school.
I wonder if countries benefitting from tourism will finally get rid of visas and passports to encourage international travel again. Probably not, but one can dream.
Maybe if the us ends up bailing out the entire world, there won’t be a reason to protect the borders with passports as we will have a United States of earth. Fed swap lines are already available to around a dozen countries.
* Any concern for the COVID-resilient groups running around spreading the germs to more susceptible? How do we measure what level of social life one is allowed to have while putting other groups at risk?
* Enforcement. How do we advertise and enforce these new rules? Will certain people feel discriminated against? Should police card/arrest people if they look just a little too gray/old/wrinkly?
I think just "talking" about this will be opinions vs opinions. We should start with numbers and then try to see what makes sense.
Then there is no doubts that the virus hit hardest the elders.
Again, what I am saying is that younger people are hit by the lockdown much more than the elders while being the less concerned about the virus itself.
And we should talk also about this.