Thread by @Noahpinion

1/A lot of people, especially certain Wall St. people but also Trump and some local leaders, have depicted us as having a choice between human suffering and economic pain.

Here's why they have it exactly backward, and why shutdowns help the economy.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

2/AS my colleague @skominers reports, new research on the history of the Spanish Flu -- our last really big pandemic, a century ago -- shows that shutdowns RAISE long-term economic growth in the face of a pandemic.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

3/Once again: Cities that did shutdowns earlier and more aggressively had HIGHER employment levels after the end of the pandemic.

4/How could this be? Don't shutdowns hurt the economy?

Yes. But lack of shutdowns hurts the economy more.

Because SHUTDOWNS WORK, and PANDEMICS HURT THE ECONOMY WORSE THAN SHUTDOWNS.

5/If you let people out to mingle in the middle of a pandemic, people will panic when a ton of them start getting sick. No one is going to want to go shopping or eat out. Or go to work, for that matter. And without shutdown, that panic and disruption goes on a LONG time.

6/Shutdowns are a bit of pain now for a lot of gain tomorrow.

"Out by Easter" is a recipe for a bit of gain today and a lot of pain tomorrow. It's short-sighted, self-destructive, and ultimately bad for the economy's productive power.

It also gets a lot more people killed.

7/So tell your governors and mayors to heed the lessons of history and #ShutItDown -- not just to save human life, but so that their cities and states will flourish economically after this is all over.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…