(04-04-2020, 11:58 AM)2006alum Wrote: Recall that when the Supreme Court announced it was postponing oral arguments, it stated that the move was not unprecedented; it had done so during the 1918-19 Spanish Flu as well. My assumption is just as we survived the social distancing measures then, so too will we now.Very difficult to compare the two eras. The ratio of urban population to rural population was very different. Distancing in rural populations is almost a given. The population in the world was also much lower, which will affect recovery in ways I can't analyze. Life expectancy was shorter anyway, and medical care was not "modern". Most people expected that if they got really sick they would die, because that was so. It was a different beast entirely.
What this says about the speed of economic recovery is unknown. One big difference is that in 1919 people did not expect that epidemics would not happen, and that if they did happen they would somehow be protected. They knew that wasn't so. As a result, they probably had social attitudes that made recovery less difficult.