You can remove the "Mitigate health inequities" subcategory and the essential workers approach still comes out ahead in the ethics category due to the "Promote

You can remove the "Mitigate health inequities" subcategory and the essential workers approach still comes out ahead in the ethics category due to the "Promote Justice" category which is the fairness of controlling exposure reason I detailed in my last comment. Minimizing deaths isn't being ignored, it plays a factor in every single one of the top level categories. It simply isn't a line item itself. It also needs to be weighed with other health considerations. For example, the essential worker approach reduces the number of infections and we should all know by now that COVID shouldn't be judged in a purely binary way with deaths versus recoveries. Also I am not putting a value judgement on these approaches. I am explaining the way I interpret the judging criteria.