That's not how infinities work. There are an uncountably infinite number of real numbers between 0 and 1, but that doesn't mean that new real numbers are constantly being produced. An infinite number of universes existing right now is a very different thing than a finite number existing right now, but more being created without end. Moreover, an infinite number of universes (or numbers, or anything) does not in any way imply (or dis-imply) some kind of unbounded process of creation. You can even have an infinite number of universes, with a finite rate of universes being destroyed, and will always still have an infinite number of universes in existence. Infinity is a state, not a process.

Of course, getting back to the subject at hand, whether physics supports the idea of infinite universes existing is a different matter altogether.

That is not correct. Capital and economic value is being destroyed constantly, and therefore money is being lost if we're not generating economic value at at least replacement rate.

People are burning otherwise potentially productive days/weeks/months of their all-to finite lives doing nothing productive. Other, less fortunate people are outright dying earlier than they otherwise would have for various reasons (not just the virus itself, but also to otherwise-treatable medical issues that overwhelmed healthcare systems cannot now address).

Productive capacity is being lost. An empty seat on an airplane, or a flight not made at all, are examples of economic value that is lost forever. The same is largely true for services not rendered. Other things like a lost season of college basketball represent value irrevocably lost as well.

Manufacturing facilities that otherwise run at output capacity lose whatever production capacity they had for the duration they're shut down--this is especially true in industries where technological obsolescence is rapid. Each day the California Tesla plant is down represents a number of cars that will now never be made.

All of the above represents money being destroyed/consumed without the typical value/money-creating activities creating replacement/replacement+ value. The examples above are not just theoretical thought exercises--actual hard currency is effectively destroyed in all of the above processes. Central banks can paper over the problem by issuing more currency, but the more they do that without a commensurate increase in real value in the economy represents a devaluation of all of the currency in circulation.

All of the above is not meant to discount the need to take dramatic steps to deal with the pandemic, and I'm not trying to argue that the steps being taken are not worth it (or that they are necessarily sufficient). As you note, letting the virus run rampant results in an entirely different sequence of destruction. Really, a global pandemic is like the economic equivalent of a hot nuclear war and subsequent nuclear winter. The choice for society and policymakers is which tradeoffs you want to make while dealing the situation.

Removable media (e.g. tape and WORM optical disk) libraries were typical for petabyte+ storage arrays back in the late 90s. I remember the Subaru telescope facility in Hawaii had a petabyte storage facility which was primarily an automated tape library (plus a large section of wall occupied by a physically massive ~40gb RAM array) when I very briefly interned* there in the late 90s.

That was large, but not uniquely or ridiculously large. My WAG is that, globally, there were probably on the order of 1k installations of similar or greater magnitude at the time. Certainly some of the DOD projects at LLNL would easily have been at the scale your parent poster claims.

*I.e. assisted with workstation builds & linux installs.