by Jack Le Moine
Sometime this last month we hit an “oh crap!” moment where we realized that this epidemic was really big. What gets me is how up to that moment this epidemic story was just another bad news story. This has become really world-shaking.
The economy and all society had been locked down. Churches cannot hold services. Theatres are closed. People cannot leave their homes.
What whey they can. When workers return to work will there be jobs for them to come back to? In order to have employees there must be employers. What happens when businesses go out of business?
This is the logic of the $2 trillion stimulus bill in the United States. It really isn’t “stimulus”; it is “life-support”. The economy is like a patient that has been placed in a coma. The patient still needs nutrients to survive.
The economy will be brought out of its coma someday. What then?
I hate to predict this but the worldwide shutdowns have been so severe, I do not see anything but a worldwide depression between the recovery and the return to normalcy. I hope that its duration will be short.
Before now the great pandemic of a century ago was virtually ignored by history. It was an episode between the story of World War I and the Roaring Twenties. It is difficult to think that this pandemic will be viewed similarly.
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