I believe where you are interpreting it one way and the rest of us are interpreting it another is perhaps due to missing the quotation marks.

...deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18...

Davidson, the CEO in question, directly said "huge, huge numbers" and "primarily working-age people 18..." in his address. However the author of the article, Margaret Menge, added the "that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying" piece.

Essentially Margaret, as explained in another comment, used a literary construction to tie the quotes together. The sentence is being used to convey that contrary to the popular narrative that the pandemic is only killing the elderly, here we have evidence that it's affecting other cohorts as well.