Thousands/millions out of work may (or may not) experience morbid effects. They will have a harder time participating in the buy side of the economy and driving demand, and also represent missing productivity. That's nothing to sneeze at.
But thousands/millions dead are guaranteed morbid effects. And dead people are even harder to get back into the demand side of the economy (or productivity) than jobless people.
Also near the peak of an unconstrained pandemic... what should we think people's improvised reactions will look like? Business as usual, no economic impact?
The best way to not have an economic impact was not to have an uncontained epidemic we weren't prepared for. We kinda missed that step. Why would we have a choice not to have serious economic impacts at this point?
The scary thing is that many of the deaths are more or less guaranteed even if we try to treat them, until the point a cure or vaccine is developed.
>Why would we have a choice not to have serious economic impacts at this point?
That's not really a choice at this point, but we do have two paths with unknown outcomes. We can choose to focus on limiting the spread at all costs (and hitting the economy harder) or we can focus on limiting the economic effects but give up on containing the virus. Neither is a good choice in any capacity, but it could turn out that either one minimizes death in the long-term.
Thousands/millions out of work may (or may not) experience morbid effects. They will have a harder time participating in the buy side of the economy and driving demand, and also represent missing productivity. That's nothing to sneeze at.
But thousands/millions dead are guaranteed morbid effects. And dead people are even harder to get back into the demand side of the economy (or productivity) than jobless people.
Also near the peak of an unconstrained pandemic... what should we think people's improvised reactions will look like? Business as usual, no economic impact?
The best way to not have an economic impact was not to have an uncontained epidemic we weren't prepared for. We kinda missed that step. Why would we have a choice not to have serious economic impacts at this point?