[arel]

The point is avoiding mass death. They care about their families lives too and not just economics.

It's not a 'political' choice or about 'optics'.

It's also not just 'old' people who are dying. It affects 50+ year olds in not insignificant numbers.

It depends whether you prioritise health or economics.

You can balance health and economics and choose to prioritise one _before_ the other.

It does however requires the political will to support the economy (and the poorest) whilst health care is prioritised to buy time during the exponential phase.

[dirtyid]

This is all theoretically true, but my inclination is that healthcare cannot be prioritized in a meaningful way within a meaningful time frame in many countries. I would love for India to succeed, but it seems incredibly unlikely that they can delay mass deaths for the time it will take to roll out a vaccine, because it does not seem possible for India to elevate medical access to comparable levels with developing countries per capita in the same time frame. So this delay is just heaping on unnecessary economic damage which in many ways is linked to health. Either way, I wish them the best.