This is ridiculous. Any economic effect of the 1918 flu is overpowered by the end of WWI.<p>And the 1918 flu was followed by one of the most prosperous periods in history: the roaring 20s.<p>The response to the 1918 flu was also not very centralized. Different states and cities did different things, a strategy which is today being deplored by the media and certain segments of the population. Since the response is significantly more centralized today (entire states being shutdown, which has not happened before), I'm not sure you can draw the same conclusions. It's one thing to have one shutdown city in a country full of working cities. It's quite another thing to have them all shut down at the same time, as well as the entire world.
The very title of this paper suggests a deeply flawed conclusion. A sample size of one pandemic, from 100 years ago even, is used to generalize a conclusion that "Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not". Sure, there were multiple cities with varying levels of interventions, but you can only conclude that in the 1918 economy for that specific pandemic, the health interventions were good for the economy at that point in time.<p>I also agree with the other commenter that it may be better to see some research prior to December 2019.
Are there any papers coming to a similar conclusion that were released prior to December 2019? Just in case there's some bias from the current moment. Not saying there's necessarily any evidence of such in this one, but it'd be interesting to compare, at least.
And now the academy desperately tries to save face, as the COVID-19 pandemic starts to wind down, and the consequences of all the panic <i>caused by the academy</i> start to play out. This year will be remembered as the end of modern academia.