[danarmak]

You're right, my comment was partly wrong (and it's too late to edit it). They don't say that Ethics outweighs Science as a subject matter. They say that Science predicts all three proposals are equally good, and therefore Ethics gets the deciding vote.

(I disagree with the claim that the choice of which group to vaccinate first won't strongly affect the total number of infections and deaths. But that's a different argument.)

And then, within the Ethics group, they say that the deciding ethical factor in favor of vaccinating essential workers is that they have a higher proportion of minorities and low-income families than the other groups (of high-risk and of old people).

They don't give any reasoning, so it's hard to argue with this. Unlike the Science section, which links a study that models deaths prevented by targeted vaccination. The Ethics section lists some unsupported and unquantified claims (table on slide 31) and at the same time judges which outcomes are better.

Crucially, the first line of this table says that ethically it's equally good to either "Preserve services essential to the COVID-19 response and overall functioning of society", or to "Reduce morbidity and mortality in persons with highest burden of COVID-19 hospitalization and death". Why? Based on what refutable data or model or ethical theory? Who knows.

Of course, this is a summary presentation; there may have been something behind it that they didn't refer or link to.