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He had two options

1) Try to save as many lives as possible by enforcing protections and encouraging people to follow safety protocols.  However, doing this would necessarily tank the economy.  Thus, the Democrats would say that he is responsible for tanking the economy.

2) Try to keep the economy open and not worry about Covid Cases, a la Ron Desantis.  However, if he did this, the Democrats would say he is responsible for the lack of response to Covid.

It's a lose-lose situation.

His economy was booming before Covid.  The Trade War with China was successful.  If it was not, Biden would have ended the tariffs, but he did not.

COVID is bad luck for a president, no doubt.  This is not unique to Trump.  Outside factors and global events shape how we view these presidents, especially in the moment.

Just to stick with one political party, so it's not a partisan conversation, you saw very poor thoughts of Carter when he left office and very good thoughts of Clinton.  But as time goes on, those things level out.  Carter was in office in a no-win scenario.  Clinton had an Internet boom and couldn't lose.

But over time, historians deep dig and have a better understanding of long-term effects of actual policy; not just what was the immediate snap-judgment of the moment.

Carter is a good guy but he was not a good president. He didn't get anything done while in office outside of human rights accords between other countries. Democrats in Congress didn't even want to work with him. He was very relatable as a person but his leadership skills were pretty much zero.  You'd want to be friends with him but you wouldn't want him to run your business.

Trump did not do this.  He openly admitted that he downplayed the virus to "avoid creating a panic." (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658)  Other industrialized countries that did not try to downplay COVID had both fewer deaths and less severe economic impact than the US.

This is what Trump attempted to do.  However, when people saw that 3,000 10,000 Americans a week were dying, Trump's feeble efforts to tell them everything is fine, just go about your normal lives didn't work.  So finally, he was forced to acknowledge reality.

It's also important to note that while you say Democrats will blame Trump (and DeSantis) for the deaths, Republican voters don't care!   The number of deaths "with COVID" is simply not something that Republican voters are concerned about, at all.  So that's not a loss, it's a win: your base will enthusiastically cheer your indifference to COVID and won't care about the number of deaths.  (The economy will tank, but as we can see, Republican voters like yourself give Trump a complete pass on the 2020 economy.  It's not his fault!)

So I'd say you have it exactly backwards:

1) If Trump treats COVID like a serious danger, he saves hundreds of thousands of lives and reduces the severity of the economic impact (as we saw in most other industrialized countries) - this is a win
2) If Trump downplays and minimizes COVID, his base cheers him on while not caring about the deaths and giving him a total pass on the economic devastation - this is a win

For Trump, COVID wasn't lose-lose, it was win-win.

edit: corrected the number of COVID deaths per week in the early pandemic