The daily reporting of the COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic has been a sobering, sometimes emotional, expression of the toll on our community. A reductive perspective on the pandemic has often pitted those lives versus the economy and they have been characterised as mutually exclusive, irreconcilable enemies, locked in a grotesque battle. In recent decades, gross domestic product (GDP) is a single number that dominates our lives. This concept of the ‘economy’ has been described as ‘trying to squeeze a frog into a matchbox’.1 Imagine if we tried to encapsulate the …