There is no trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods and economic growth. The impact of a pandemic on the economy is thought to work through several pathways - and in all of them the higher the morbidity and mortality the bigger the negative impact on GDP.

The global macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19: Seven scenarios https://brook.gs/32ME41w  via @BrookingsInst models this for 7 possible scenarios of disease spread. The first 3 of these are no longer relevant - they assumed containment to China.

A pandemic affects GDP through: (a) labour supply shocks - workers falling sick and dying; (b) higher risk premia; (c) higher costs of production due to disruption; (d) lower consumer demand as families spend more on health; (e) higher public spending on health.

In all these pathways higher morbidity and mortality means a negative hit on the GDP. These relationships are posited on the basis of prior evidence of such effects. They are thought to hold true widely. Is Pakistan an exception? What assumptions would be need for it to be one?

For Pakistan to be an exception to the rule the following will need to be true: (a) Labour - sickness and death will NOT seriously disrupt productivity; (b) consumer demand will NOT shift significantly; (c) government spending will NOT respond to the crisis.

These postulates are not FACTS. They are a way of seeing the world that amounts to saying: people are dispensable, their families think they are dispensable, and the wider community thinks they are dispensable. This is not the Pakistan we know. It is not one we wish to know.