A lot of people are pushing this tradeoff narrative and it's a completely false one. It's not like mass death has no economic consequences. If people are scared of a pandemic they're not going to just go back to their normal economic life, regardless of any cheerleading from government officials.

The way to get the economy back on track is to stop the virus as quickly as possible. The way to do that is to lock down hard for about six weeks, then open up but have lots of testing and contact tracing.