What economies face now may not be solely a coronavirus-triggered meltdown. As devastating as the coming recession—or depression—is likely to be, the health crisis is exacerbating problems in a system that was already under strain.

A view of Times Square hours ahead of the implementation of 'New York State on PAUSE' executive order as the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States on March 22, 2020, in New York City. The World Health Organization declared coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic on March 11th. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Times Square in New York City, a symbol of global growth, is empty—is that for the best?(Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

In the past month, as the world grappled with the coronavirus, images circulated from the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918: grainy black-and-white photographs of police in masks, hospitals with rows and rows of beds, Red Cross workers bearing stretchers. Then, as now, there was no vaccine. Schools, churches and bars closed, and quarantines were imposed. Then, as now, travel helped spread the virus globally (it was wartime); at least 50 million people died. And then, as now, economies were affected, though it’s difficult to calculate how much, as the Spanish flu began during the Great War, which had its own effects. The World Economic Forum estimates the outbreak reduced GDP per capita by six per cent.

One clear difference, though, is that the Spanish flu pandemic, as it’s known, did not arrive to a backdrop of anxiety about economic growth. That term came into more common use in the ensuing years; worry about inadequate growth was not the preoccupation it has been in the past decade.

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