After the lockdown

Planning for the revival of the economy

This is a time when, as the authorities deal with a lockdown, there needs to be an equal emphasis on providing for large numbers of people without the money for food and necessities, while the rest of us wait it out. Hard as it is, an MIT scholar writes that after the Spanish flu in 1918, cities that restricted public gatherings sooner and longer had fewer fatalities, and emerged with stronger economic growth. 1 It is likely that costs and benefits vary with economic and social capacity, and we may have a harder time with it here.