We live in a world of great abundance of every measurable sort, and insistence on putting economic expansion ahead of protection of our friends, families, and neighbors would be better analyzed using the lens of ethics rather than that of finance.
We could, say, ban driving except by professional trained drivers, and get rid of tens of thousands of deaths per year, at the cost of "only" a hit to the economy. Should we do that?
Would this analogy hold up if we instead considered the cost of defending against an invading army? Would it really be reasonable to ask if we had enough money to build the machinery to hold them at bay?
In past times we and other successes societies have worked in concert to defeat threats to our collective and worried about fixing any economic consequences later.
Value of life is relevant when comparing different possible actions that cost different amounts of resources. If it's clear that the benefit is more than the cost, you might not actually have to do the analysis. But if the cost is measured in trillions of dollars, then it becomes very relevant to see exactly what the expected benefits are. If the invading army is going to kill a hundred thousand people, and defending against them requires using up resources equivalent to letting five hundred thousand people die, then it's very much a question that should be asked.
Black people are dying at a rate more than 1.5 times higher than their population share [0].
I'm also not sure what you mean about my estimation of abundance. We have all of the resources we need to focus our efforts on minimizing the spread of this disease and building the infrastructure to find a cure. What resource do you think we lack?