I don't understand why the goals need to be 'maximum' anything. By it's nature, maximizing for something means something else needs to be completely minimized.
Life, society and the world doesn't work like that, regardless of whether there's an extreme event going on.
Any goals should include balance and shouldn't just be trying to maximizing one variable.
Even using something I personally can't stand as an example, models. In a model, maximizing a variable rarely leads to any desirable outcome and models tend to be a poor reflection of reality as is.
Reality is far more complex, having a goal be to maximize for one specific variable means your minimizing other variables that are in many cases complete unknowns.
Instead of working towards measured goals designed to minimize overall negative impacts, the reaction has been to maximize for saving as many lives as possible at the expense of all else.
The problem is, there's no way to even really be sure what we've done is maximizing the amount of lives saved, but at the same time we've ignored very real negative impacts in this blind rush towards maximizing saving as many lives as possible.
And to be honest, from what i've seen on the news, heard people saying, read on comments here...this seems to be the primary motivation behind this goal(or thinking like this)
>“Whose grandmother and grandfather and family members are you willing to sacrifice for this stupid idea?” asked Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith, whose administration in March led the Bay Area in imposing the first U.S. lockdown in the pandemic and has since been criticized since for its slow pace of reopening.
This is a logical fallacy intended to appeal to emotion. Wide sweeping policy decisions affecting the health and well being of most of society should never be based on emotional appeal.