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Soubresaut's avatar

Is economic crash a necessary feature of a pandemic?

Asked by Soubresaut (13714points) May 7th, 2020

(Length kind of got away from me on this one—I bolded parts that I think get at the gist for people who don’t want to read everything.)

I know that a lot of businesses are having to close or reduce operations for various reasons (shelter-in-place orders regarding non-essential businesses, or would-be customers exercising caution and not shopping, or having employees fall ill, or having supply chain issues, etc.). I don’t want this question to become a discussion on the merits of the first thing I listed (shelter-in-place orders), because that’s not what I’m asking.

I’m asking: Isn’t there a way for us to be smarter than this virus in how we respond to its effects on our normal operations?

I know that during wars there can be an economic boon as production ramps up on materials and equipment needed for war. (Obviously there is also a profound human cost to wars, but if we’re just focusing on the economic impacts…) Various non-essential everyday goods become scarce as their materials are directed instead towards needed supplies. Production lines are shifted into manufacturing wartime supplies. Propaganda and media encourage those who are able to fill jobs as production increases (even facilitating shifts in deep-rooted cultural notions, such as whether women belonged in the workplace).... And unless I’m mistaken, these shifts are done deliberately and strategically; they are decisions made by people to adjust to the new demands of the temporary normal.

Would it be so hard to have a similar economic shift as we battle a virus? We simultaneously have a dearth of production with the kinds of supplies needed for this kind of war—and doesn’t that mean we have new potential jobs to open up in response to new immediate needs? And meanwhile, we have people out of work because the new demands our temporary normal don’t have a place for those jobs—and doesn’t that mean we have a workforce of people with a wide range of skills that could be tapped?

And I know that the analogy with wartime production starts to fail a bit here, since economic boons with war are usually when the fighting is “elsewhere” (from what I understand), and here the fight is everywhere… but there are ways to protect workers (which different companies are currently implementing to different degrees…), and by producing more PPE, more needed medical equipment, more materials for testing kits, needed technology, etc., it seems like we would in theory be better able to understand and control the spread, thus enabling more normal operations to resume. Shelter-in-place would be one strategy of many, and we could use it with more precision, instead of it being the primary strategy available to us.

But there are clearly reasons this kind of mobilization isn’t happening, because if I’ve thought of it, it’s not a very difficult or clever or original idea. So why isn’t this kind of mobilization happening? Where are the deliberate and strategic decisions to meet the current demands with needed supply?

TL;DR: Why isn’t there more government coordination to shift production and other economic activity to better respond to the current crisis, while simultaneously providing job opportunities to people who have lost their typical job in this atypical time (as there would be during wartime)?

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11 Answers

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Politicians will start promising more moon shots in November. November is the election date for Canada and the USA.
To pay for it all the government’s going to either go futher into debt or needs to print more money. Either would cause an inflation that will raise the price for everyone and everything.
Those on fixed incomes will be hurt the most. Like the disabled and seniors.
Declaring that a pandemic is a war is a trick to dive into social security funding and other off limit ways to raise cash.

gondwanalon's avatar

Of course an economic crash is necessary. That’s a way to get rid of Trump.

Soubresaut's avatar

I see how campaign promises and economic situations can be politically expedient, but neither makes the situation necessary.

By “necessary,” I mean, is there really no way for us to use our big human brains and human abilities to organize societies to stop, or at least mitigate an economic crash? I may not know how precisely to do that (I don’t have a degree in economics or sociology or political science or law), but I have a hard time believing there isn’t a way out there, even if it would ask more of our society that we usually expect of it.

Demosthenes's avatar

The more I read about history and economics, the less I’m convinced that economic crashes are ever “necessary” or “inevitable”. We just convince ourselves they are so bad decisions can be covered up and blame can be diverted to some other-worldly “system” that no one has any control over.

MrGrimm888's avatar

There are many variables…

There are 215 (I think) countries, in the world. All with different governments, leaders, resources, needs, etc…

All have been affected by this pandemic…

So… I ascertain, that there just wasn’t a preparation for this type of thing. At least, not in such scale.

I would point to the wildfires, in California, as an example.
It’s one of the most prosperous, and important states, in a very powerful nation. The fires happen, every year.
Fire, has been around for all of human history…
(So have viruses…)
Yet…They are both capable of doing massive amounts of damage, without our a ability to stop them…

Some things, are simply beyond human control…

zenvelo's avatar

There are industries doing very well right now. Communication infrastructure is booming, as are pharmaceuticals.

Yes, we can have ”...more government coordination to shift production and other economic activity to better respond to the current crisis, while simultaneously providing job opportunities to people who have lost their typical job in this atypical time but the President has only taken such steps to punish businesses he has a grudge against, like General Motors. The rest (and all the employees) are left to “the free market”. The stimulus packages are just a way for Trump, McConnell and company to pay off the wealthy.

stanleybmanly's avatar

Apples and Oranges. The thing common to war, plague and recession is that they are all as certain in our future as death itself. The other thing common to those 4 certainties is that we won’t be ready for any of them.

JLeslie's avatar

No. Not with this virus anyway. There are countries that are not shutting down. They took the virus seriously very early on, started wearing masks, some distancing, stopped flights coming in from hot areas, lots of testing. America didn’t do any of that.

Response moderated (Unhelpful)
dabbler's avatar

Short answer: NO.
A pandemic does not inherently mean there will be a financial crash.

IF a contagion is identified early enough, and
IF the sources of contagion and how they got here are identified early, and
IF tests can reliably confirm who is infected, and
IF contact-tracing is done immediately, and
IF people who have been in contact with infected people are quarantined, and
IF the general population are cooperative about it and wear masks and distance appropriately…
then the number of people infected at any given time is minimized and the impact to the economy is minimized. If this is done well enough there is no need to quarantine a whole state or nation, relatively moderate measures can allow regular commerce to proceed.
Singapore and South Korea seem to have done most of these things and are ramping back to normal economic activity.

In the U.S. we completely bobbled several of thesesteps :
identifying that COVID-19 was coming to the U.S. from Europe
despite a good working test method from WHO, our CDC devised its own test and produced a couple unusable rounds of tests
contact tracing has been done haphazardly and inconsistently so we could not effectively do the next step
in most cases of confirmed infection tracing and isolation have not been done. Also there is little support in the U.S. for someone to stay home if they have no symptoms but were in contact with an infected person.

Given that serial incompetence, the only way to avoid overwhelming hospital systems, and avoid unnecessary deaths, is to shut down the whole society – with the economic consequences we are now beginning to deal with.

It would have been far less expensive to jump on this thing intelligently, immediately, but the U.S. aren’t capable of doing anything that isn’t of interest to corporate profit.

Soubresaut's avatar

Thank you for all the responses. This is all so frustrating.

If anyone’s interested, the latest episode of the podcast The Weeds (episode Reopening without a plan) happens to talk about this same issue, too. Happened to turn it on yesterday.

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