Someone elsewhere on HN introduced the amount of suffering in the world to the topic, specifically people suffering to allow western quality of life. The later qualification is more interesting than it seems as to me it doesn't make it much more shameful to have needless suffering if you do or do not need people. (How badly do we need those boomers? Inappropriate question? yes?)

If 1% is 1 million then 30% is 30 million and 100% is 100 million? I thought we had more people?

But lets assume for sake of argument that we've over reacted. Its pretty fantastic the way all countries in the world [few exceptions aside] took the matter so seriously and managed to take collective action this quickly. Despite all the death and suffering we now have a legitimate reason to be hopeful and imaginative about what else we can do and what it might cost.

The situation is truly weirder than fiction: The Corona lock down might have saved [oh, say] 80 million elderly people (unscientific number). It might in 2020 also push 180 million [additional] incomes below $5.50/day, 150 m below $3.20/day, 60 m below $1.90/day. We can barely imagine the long term effects of that. Safe to say it ain't pretty.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview