I do agree with your conclusions. But this statistical argument isn’t so great.

A 20-year-old has a lot more to lose than an 80-year-old when it comes to dying. Statistically, an octogenarian can expect to live less than ten years, while the 20-year-old should be expecting at least 60 more years. From a utilitarian viewpoint, there’s little contest.

Sure, the 20-year-old may have been hit by a car next week, but we’re talking large numbers of people. Statistically, if a hundred 80-year-olds died, the world loses less than a thousand years of life, whereas if the same number of 20-year-olds die, we lose six times as much — and I might add that these are better years of life for nearly all humans.

I’m closer to 80 than 20. If I had died at twenty, my last thoughts would probably have been rage, for having been robbed of a full life. I still really don’t want to die, but now I have had that full life.

And law, custom and medical practice also think this way. If someone is killed, their family gets compensation for the years of life taken. In disasters, people routinely rescue young people. DNRs are solicited from old people, and ignored in young people. In many societies like some of native peoples of the north, older people will sacrifice themselves when resources are scarce.

Again — I agree with your conclusions, it’s just the argument is wrong. Abandon the whole statistical approach — it’s an ethical argument you seek. Developed countries in 2020 are incredibly rich — we can afford to save our parents and grandparents and uncles and grade school teachers from horrible and untimely deaths, and it’s worth tightening our belts for the next few years to do so.

I might also note that the top 1% and particularly the top 0.1% of humanity have systematically looted the world’s economies for generations, which is why in some countries like the UK and the US the response is so bad.

We should allow these rich sociopaths to continue to live — but only in exchange for returning the means to live to everyone else.