As we get more facts, we should to be able to ask sensible questions about this entire situation. There are net effects here. The economy is not some nebulous thing out there, as if it is separate from us. The economy is us. It represents our interactions. It is our way of allocating resources and calculating which projects to undertake.
There have been three separate studies now that show this virus is much, much more contagious than originally thought. This is good news because most people don’t even know they have it. The death rate is lower than originally thought.
For those who would be in serious danger, the goal was to not prevent them from ever getting the virus. That is like stopping the wind. Rather, the goal was to slow the rate of hospitalizations, prevent overwhelming the system. All things considered, I think that was successful. We will never really know if we could have done the same without the severe economic hit. Sweden and Japan present an interesting counterfactual. We ought to be able to talk about it. But it doesn’t matter. Open stuff back up.