Why Didn't the 1958 and 1918 Pandemics Destroy the Economy?

https://mises.org/wire/why-didnt-1958-and-1918-pandemics-destroy-economy-hint-its-lockdowns

by nnx • 6 years ago

11 8 6 years ago

rowawey• 6 years ago

The 1968 pandemic was roughly as bad the 1958 one. What's interesting is that there was either little/no surveillance in the US or there may have been censorship about it until after it was almost over, because it wasn't widely-reported when hospitals were overflowing and turning-away patients. It also caused severe delirium much like SARS2. I would wager there were asymptomatic carriers of it: my mom said she was bed-ridden with it while my grandparents didn't seem to get sick.

gnusty_gnurc4• 6 years ago

I'd love to see someone actually dispatch with Michael Levitt's work - as time goes by his claim that the disease spread of an isolated outbreak is never exponential seems to hold up. It's confounding that Japan seems to have limited the disease spread just by doing simple avoidance and hygiene measures. I pretty much discount people who seem to think we've got this figured out (the establishment and experts have been next to useless).

perl4ever3• 6 years ago

It looks to me as if it went back to exponential as of May-ish. Because while it slowed in places that did lock down, it got going in the places that were not locked down. Italy and NY are out, Brazil and Texas are in. Am I missing something?

See Daily New Cases at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Early May was generally under 100K new cases a day, now it's up to 130K and accelerating.

Why Didn't the 1958 and 1918 Pandemics Destroy the Economy?

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