No. You include everybody who is exposed to it in the denominator. And if it kills mostly old people in nursing homes, it literally IS the flu, because the flu does exactly the same thing.. Kill old people and those in nursing homes. Every year. Year in and year out.
You only exclude young people who catch it from the denominator if you want to lie and spread panic porn “numbers”.
But now you’re talking cases and infection vectors. That’s incorrect math. We are talking about death. You don’t include samples in a death calculation who are not vulnerable to death. The young essentially aren’t.
The majority of deaths are not in nursing homes. Many are. The majority are not. The VAST majority are old. The old DEFINE the numerator.
And thus must define the denominator, too.
You know this is true. Don’t contort around it for the economy. The old die. They are the vulnerable. They are the Excess Deaths.
You can see lockdown on the Excess Deaths webpage of the CDC. You can see the curves plummet. But the end of the economy is too great a price. You COULD just quarantine the elderly, not the whole population.
But . . . and this is the ugly subtle item . . . the elderly are 23% of the population and they spend life savings and pensions. They are a huge part of the economy. They have to eat so they still spend, but if they are selectively locked down, they won’t spend on cruises and airplane trips and whatever. They are 23% and 1/2 of their spending would erase. That’s 11% of national revenues in an economy that struggles to get 2% GDP growth.
There is no answer here without a cure. Period.