During the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, more people died from the flu than in WWI. The war was over in 1919, and although the ravages of the flu had taken a toll, the stock market didn’t crash.
Someone looking only at a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the latter part of that decade would never guess that those years encompassed the worst epidemic in recorded history, an epidemic far worse than the Covid-19 virus.
According to a Stanford University Web site, a fifth of the world’s population was infected in that epidemic, and an estimated 20 to 40 million people died of it.
The infection rate was even higher in the U.S., where 28% of the population came down with the disease and 675,000 died. Of course, the population then was about a third as large as it is today.
One statistic though does a particularly good job of communicating the magnitude of the epidemic: According to the Stanford Web site, “the effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the U.S. was depressed by 10 years.”
Even those panicking about today’s forecasts don’t come anywhere near the horrid scenario of the past. And yet the stock market did not crash in the wake of the 1918-19 pandemic. Indeed, it rose smartly.
So, what is the difference? The times have changed. Nearly everything America consumes is made in China, including our prescription drugs.
