Is it rational to choose economy over lives?
At the very least it's morally repugnant. The majority of the politicians are in vulnerable demographics, so at least they'll pay the price like everyone else.
At the very least it's morally repugnant. The majority of the politicians are in vulnerable demographics, so at least they'll pay the price like everyone else.
That's a false dichotomy: GDP is correlated with life expectancy, so you can't really choose one without the other. It's a question of which method saves more lives in the long-term, and UK appears have made their choice. Note that they most likely have much better understanding of the resources and capacity of NHS than U.S. scientists have.
The number of ICU beds and respirators in the UK is public knowledge. It's also enough for less than 1% of the tsunami of cases I expect to swamp the NHS over the next sixty days.