Your assumption is that there is a tradeoff to be made.

This is a common assumption, but I believe it's incorrect. As I showed by analyzing the pandemic as a classical feedback system [1], the long-term policy curve isn't just a simple tradeoff (i.e. "optimizing for reducing deaths of that one thing"), but is actually like an inverted parabola [2] with three regions.

But you are correct that our current public policy (by which I mean aggregate US public behavior, not just official policy) is currently targeting one of the worst long-term outcomes, which includes both higher-than-necessary COVID-19 deaths, AND higher-than-necessary collateral economic and other damage.

I believe that with a different strategy we can probably reduce Covid19Exception and simultaneously reduce HeartException and CancerException.

[1] https://www.circuitlab.com/blog/2020/05/28/surprising-covid-...

[2] https://cdn.circuitlab.com/misc/20200526_SurprisingCOVID19St...