In Pandemic Year, Saving Lives Also Saved Jobs: Chart

(Bloomberg) -- There wasn’t a Covid-year trade-off between protecting lives and protecting the economy, data analyzed by Bloomberg Economics suggests. Most big economies either did well at protecting lives and output -- like China, Japan and South Korea, or they did badly in both areas, like the U.K., Spain, and Argentina. Indeed, the mistake for those that did badly often started with the belief that there was a trade-off: Governments acting on the false hope that a little more growth could be purchased at the expense of a few more virus cases often ended up with precious few more jobs but a lot more contagion.

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