The costs of ignoring the pandemic are very country-dependent. In countries whose economies are based on extraction of natural resources, only a fairly small am

The costs of ignoring the pandemic are very country-dependent. In countries whose economies are based on extraction of natural resources, only a fairly small amount of people are needed to run the extraction and export sector. All the other tens of millions of people living in that country have bluntly been called things like "superfluous population" by thinktanks. That small workforce maintaining the economy is little affected by a disease like COVID with its median death age of ~80. Also, it was believed that COVID presented a threat to the broader economy because it could overwhelm the healthcare system, preventing the broader workforce from accessing treatment. However, one approach is to triage COVID victims, denying them hospital beds so that those beds remain available for the broader population. Liability or elected officials’ sensitivity to accusations of "letting grandma die" prevented some countries from implementing this triaging, but other countries could.