The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Is the collapse of the U.S. economy driven by Covid-19 fears justifiable?

The question no longer is avoidable. The possible ruination of the U.S. economy at the hands of the extreme measures taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is a reasonable question that has become more and more urgent.

The question is again brought to the forefront by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s shelter-in-place dictate for the state’s 40 million residents, a state whose $3-trillion-plus economy by itself is the fifth largest among the world’s nations.

The question was justifiably raised this morning by a Wall Street Journal editorial that observed, “No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its economic health.”

If this government-ordered shutdown continues for much more than another week or two, the human cost of job losses and bankruptcies will exceed what most Americans imagine. This won’t be popular to read in some quarters, but federal and state officials need to start adjusting their anti-virus strategy now to avoid an economic recession that will dwarf the harm from 2008-2009.

Asking this question does not make one a Cassandra. Or heartless. Just as Covid-19 has cost lives and money, the economic downturn already is costing, not lives, but the livelihood of millions of Americans whose jobs and savings have disappeared.

How long will these measures last? Fourteen days? A month? Months? It’s hard to imagine the economic consequences of a nation of 330 million people going dark for any length of time. The Journal calls the impact of a coronavirus shutdown “a tsunami of economic destruction…”

At first, people wondered if the panic would lead America into recession. As the impact grew, they no longer wondered; a recession is a certainty. Now the question becomes, will it amount to a depression of historic proportions? I fear it will.

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www.dennisbyrne.net

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

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Filed under:
Economy, Health

Tags:
Coronavirus, recession