That is the value of an "average" life. But the average age of death from covid is over 75, so the actual economic cost would be much less (which is accounted for when using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year, the standard way of measuring these things).
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...
I take issue with this.
The average age in the UK of death was 83 I think, compared to an average life expectancy of 82. Most had more than one comorbidity. Do we really expected these people to live until 90?
In addition to this a lot of the early deaths were in care homes were the residents aren't expected to live 8 years (less than 3 years from a very quick search). That would mean that non care home residents would need to average an ever higher amount of life for that to be true.
Sorry, that seems kind of ridiculous.
Throw in the youngers and it is clear enough the math should work out fine.
The expected life expectancy you give isn't for people with an average of two comorbidities.
In Australia, it appears some early models predicted between 50k to 150k lives lost assuming no response. A statistical life is valued at over $4m, meaning a cost of $200bn to $600bn. Also, with 60% of the population infected, that would mean over 12 million people infected - we still don't have a good idea what the long-term issues will be - but one study in Australia found ~5% of people experiencing "long covid" symptoms, which would mean at least 600,000 people with long-term complications - which in our hypothetical Harkonnen society we'd likely just shove them into a hole somewhere and forget about them, otherwise we'd have to deal with their social welfare (yuck!) and strain on the health system.
No doubt the cost, responses, short and long term impacts, etc, will be something economists and sociologists will debate for decades to come.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/thousands-of-predict...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-24/long-covid-nsw-resear...
Edit: On thinking about it, I think the value of life is based on insurance / compensation purposes, perhaps the value of a life in terms of total GDP contribution would be different? Anyway, a subject more for the actuaries and economists I think. Interesting to consider nonetheless, which I think may be the overall point of this game.