There’s No Trade-Off Between Lives and the Economy
Some countries saved both this year—while others saved neither
As the plague year of 2020 lurches to a close, it’s worthwhile revisiting one of the biggest policy mistakes of the pandemic: the attempt to preserve economic growth by minimizing restrictions that might hurt the economy. I wrote about that in May in a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story focusing on President Trump. “Will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes,” Trump told reporters during a factory visit on May 5. “But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.”
By now it’s clear there’s no necessary trade-off between lives and livelihoods. A country can have both. Two economists for Bloomberg Economics, Scott Johnson and Tom Orlik, hit that point in a graph that plots Covid-19 deaths per million population vs. the level of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter in comparison to its pre-pandemic trend.