No trade-off between Covid & economic growth

 From Our World In Data:

Responses to the pandemic have often been framed in terms of striking a balance between protecting people’s health and protecting the economy. There is an assumption that countries face a trade-off between these two objectives. But is this assumption true?

A preliminary way of answering this question is to look at how the health and economic impacts of the pandemic compare in different countries so far. Have countries with lower death rates seen larger downturns?

Comparing the COVID-19 death rate with the latest GDP data, we in fact see the opposite: countries that have managed to protect their population’s health in the pandemic have generally also protected their economy too.

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Notice how the USA & Sweden (the grey dot next to the big orange USA dot) & Belgium have abnormally high death rates compared with other countries which experienced similar economic declines.  Implying that they have managed the covid pandemic worse than the others.  It also seems quite clear that letting covid rip, which some countries have chosen to do, has meant worse economic outcomes as well as higher death rates. 

The chart below shows the varying extent of Q2 economic decline as covid hit.