Do you remember the initial response to AIDS? There's your answer.

(AIDS was originally attributed to only gays and sexually promiscuous people. Best case, leadership simply ignored it. Worst case, innocent victims were attacked [read the Wikipedia article for "Ryan Wayne White"].)

Fauci ran our response to AIDS too. He held back treatments for years expecting a vaccine. The Dallas Buyers Club is a good dramatization of what people were going through.

There's also some clips of him warning people not to have casual contact with gays (he says people with AIDS).

I would argue that our current response is what we did have done if the young were more at risk. What Sweden did was the more correct response to the current pandemic. But I wouldn't necessarily blame the older leaders. My company sent everyone home before the nation shut down, and it seemed mostly because people were worried about their kids

I am sure I know the answer. The old men would have asked the young to die. It has happened during every war since the beginning of history.

"As a thought experiment, what if the pandemic mostly hurt 20-somethings?"

This happened [1]. They told young people to go ** themselves. People had school, people went to eat, people carried on with jobs, NO government checks sent out. Deaths: 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

"Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old"

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n...