Are the old more dispensable than the young

Subject: Are the old more dispensable than the young.

The global pandemic has caused us to consider many ethical and moral questions, not least does the saving of an old persons life have more value than the saving of a younger person. Should a doctor ration the occupancy of ventilators for the young with the argument that the older persons life is nearly finished and the young can be more productively kept alive.
There has always been a point when the doctor makes a decision not to continue treatment of a patient to alleviate any further suffering if no cure is in sight but this is very different since being allowed to continue to live by being helped to breath through the ventilator does assume that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Much of modern day medicine is focused on keeping people alive by artificial means whilst waiting for the body to find its own remedy to illness or for new treatments and drugs to come along and effect a cure. It's often questionable, the extent medical intervention seems to go beyond the call of duty and people are kept alive because they can rather than in the best interests of the patient. Is it never in the best interests of the patient to let them die and how often we are incredulous at the pontifications of government not to allow, under carefully controlled circumstances, people to choose for themselves to end their own life if their lives have become intolerable.
How much more problematic that one can oversee the rationing of ventilators and yet harass the loving relatives if some one seeks an end to their life at a clinic in Switzerland and they have been a party to the event.
Do years 'still to live' equate equally with those lived. Is there an equation between the value of a citizen who has lived a blameless life and is old and a younger person who may have and may still commit all kinds of crime and be an ongoing problem to the society which saved him in preference to the pensioner.
'First come first served' against a valuatory  accountancy which perhaps takes all kinds of estimates into the mix. Not only age but their social history including time spent in jail, perhaps the school they attended, any disabilities they might have, any religious affiliation  even their gender might effect their score.
It's an Orwellian world where the Hippocratic Oath is turned on its head and lives, when at their most vulnerable are in the hands of the expert who owes his living to a committee who's ultimate duty is towards the shareholder.