Will the post-coronavirus economy come roaring back? Lessons from the 1918 pandemic and the Roaring

[Initech]

In the fall of 1918, Republican Gov. Charles Seymour Whitman was up for reelection in New York. But there was a catch.

“May abandon campaign. Theatres closed and meetings prohibited because of influenza,” a New York Times headline on Oct. 16, 1918, read. Campaign events that had been scheduled upstate were held in limbo by both the Democratic and Republican candidates, pending assurance “that the epidemic of Spanish Influenza has been abated sufficiently to permit the ban against public meetings, now rigidly enforced, being lifted.”

Whitman would ultimately lose his reelection bid, but the snag he encountered wasn’t unique. In a move that has become all too familiar to modern-day Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, across the U.S. 100 years ago, businesses, schools and events were being shuttered in an effort to stem the spread of a different virus: the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918 — or, as President Trump persists in calling it, the 1917 Spanish flu.

Today, we’re already seeing the economic consequences of COVID-19. The April employment report is expected to show a jobless rate as high as 20 percent, with tens of millions of Americans filing for unemployment in the past six weeks alone. Some, including the president, have wondered if the “cure” — that is, social distancing and lockdowns — isn’t worse than the disease itself. Trump is eager to restart business and return to what he refers to as “the greatest economy in the history of the world.” But one of the lessons of the 1918 pandemic is that we may not have to choose between saving lives and saving the economy.

A working paper on the economic impact of the Spanish flu concluded that it’s pandemics themselves, not the public health interventions enacted to mitigate them, that hurt the economy. In fact, the study found that cities that swiftly implemented public health measures such as lockdowns not only saved lives, but actually helped their economies to recover more quickly.
https://news.yahoo.com/will-the-postcoronavirus-economy-come-roaring-back-lessons-from-the-1918-pandemic-and-the-roaring-twenties-131833176.html

Interesting comparisons between the two, it seems like history is primed to repeat itself.

[Moostache]

1. One question for Trump and Fans...

IF, and I do NOT agree that this is true at all, but IF the greatest economy in the history of forever and the known universe was in fact being enjoyed in February, how could something so colossal, so immense, so strong and so great be felled by ANYTHING?

If the economy was what he insists, then any measure of all-time greatness MUST include the robustness of the economy to absorb blows and remain intact. Our economy is shattered into MILLIONS (30,000,000 and counting) of pieces...

A super-duper, mega-awesome, never-seen-in-5-eva economy could NOT - BY DEFINITION - be crushed and dismantled so fast....UNLESS, it was truly a house of cards, built on lies, sand and bluster and was so structurally weak that it could never absorb a hit like COVID and survive...

Trump's economy was brittle, frail and weak to begin with...the NYSE Dow Jones is NOT the economy, so record stock market highs are NOT record strength in the economy, period.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. So true,

all the underlying metrics are in play,and we are in for a 3-5 year slog. We will see massive deficit funding in order to save the World Economy into 2023 .

So much Bullshit coming from these so called Economic Experts who spew supply side garbage and spewing a massive uptick in,hockey stick,economic trend.