[saudioger]

It's no substitution for actual data, but there is a basic logic to it. If you're bleeding now it's more important to stanch the wound than it is to worry about avoiding future wounds (they're also not mutually exclusive conditions).

[disconcision]

Not sure analogies are strictly helpful here. Like, alternatively: Say there's a knife being pulled through your guts. Should you prioritise stopping the bleeding or trying to arrest the progress of the knife? The analysis here needs to be more quantitative: what are the returns on various mitigation and cleanup methods, and what do the respective rates of change imply in terms of comparative environmental impact over a fixed period of time?