The Bureau of Economic Analysis yesterday released its revised (second) estimate of GDP for the third quarter of 2020 (2020Q3). The recovery from the recession that was induced by COVID-19 lockdown orders continues, but there’s still a lot of lost ground to make up. And the lost ground to be made up isn’t just from the pre-COVID-19 rate of output, but from the post-Great Recession slump that persisted despite Trump’s deregulatory efforts.

Here’s the big picture:

This graph zooms in on the declining rate of growth in real GDP:

This graph highlights the declining rate of growth from business cycle to business cycle:

The unnecessarily draconian response to COVID-19 made a bad situation even worse.