I don't think we are going to settle the debate utilitarianism vs kantianism in this thread but I'll try at least to defend one side. I didn't use the term "ec

I don't think we are going to settle the debate utilitarianism vs kantianism in this thread but I'll try at least to defend one side. I didn't use the term "economic casualties". An economic crisis causes a huge amount of human suffering on massive scale, hardship on tens if not hundreds of millions of people. And this itself may have its own health consequences, but I think human suffering in all of its forms needs to be considered. But even if we assigned zero weight to that human suffering, if we go the route of pure "death minimisation", it is not even clear that the economic collapse route is less lethal. For two reasons: the first is that it is unclear what additional mortality the virus would cause vs a regular year. The median age of a covid19 victim seems to be in the 80s, and almost always (99% based on Italian figures) with some co-morbidity. It is not clear how many would have died within 18 months of something else. The other thing is that economic collapse does cause deaths also, for instance through political unstability. I think it is fair to say that the arab spring was triggered by the economic hardship caused by the 2008 crisis. And I don't know that we would have had a WW2 without the 1929 depression.