The answer to that question is this: At some point you could do many things to protect people from infection and thus possibly save those lives, maybe even most lives. But with western economies going into recession, possibly economic depression. loss of GDP, loss of production, diminished food production, and breaks in food supply chains. That situation does not just affect the wealthier nations, it will down the line severely impact poorer nations and regions. Then the risk of starvation, famine, economic and political unrest will result in what? Loss of many more human lives.
Therefore we cannot just think of this pandemic in micro terms, we need to think in macro terms. And like I already said, the virus is going to do what it does naturally until the point where we reach herd immunity anyway.
A couple of examples of the ethics being discussed would be these:
1) man has his leg caught in a railroad track but if you throw a track switch you can save his life, but the train will crash and kill many on the train. So what is his one life worth compared to the many others?
2) in WW2 the allied effort to liberate France and drive the Germans back to Germany and ultimately be defeated meant that tens of thousands of French civilians would be killed in the allied bombing raids and then the beach assaults and the fighting which would occur between allied forces and the German army on French soil. Many thousands of non combatants killed. So what was the "cost benefit" had the allies decided to not take that action, and how many more millions would die before Hitler ran out of people to put into ovens.
Hope that explains my view on the subject.
