By: Brady Lafferty
Introduction: Picture yourself walking down the street and when you look around no one in sight, every business is shut down, no cars are driving by. You would think the world has ended.. Now in reality we all experienced this the past two years and with the help of Cell Phones and social media some businesses were able to stay in business but for the majority a lot of businesses took a huge hit or completely shut down. Now imagine what it was like for business owners back in 1918 when the Spanish Flu hit the towns and there was no cure for it. They were forced to shut down making it almost impossible to maintain their business. In this article I will be comparing and contrasting the differences from the Coronavirus and The Spanish Flu of 1918.
How The Spanish Flu of 1918 Affected businesses: “The flu killed 550,000 in the United States, or 0.5 percent of the population” (Maas,1). With so many deaths caused by this flu it was extremely difficult for business owners to keep their establishment open. According to the analysts, the pandemic dropped real per capita GDP by 6% and private consumption by 8% in the typical country, resulting in reductions similar to those recorded during the Great Recession of 2008–2009. “The decline in economic activity combined with elevated inflation resulted in large declines in the real returns on stocks and short-term government bonds. For example, countries experiencing the average death rate of 2 percent saw real stock returns drop by 26 percentage points. The estimated drop in the United States was much smaller, 7 percentage points” (Maas, 1).
How has the Coronavirus affected businesses?
“The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic fallout caused significant hardship. In the early months of the crisis, tens of millions of people lost their jobs” (CBPP). This was inevitable because of the millions of businesses closing down because they were not able to stay open when covid first came around. Covid-19 affected global supply chains, making it much harder for United States businesses to fulfill orders. It can also strand workers in impacted areas, lowering labor supply on one hand and slowing demand for goods and services on the other. The United States wasn’t the only country struggling to keep up due to Covid. “The IMF estimates that the global economy will shrink by 4.4% in 2020. The organization described the decline as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s” (Jones,1). China shut down factories in virus-affected areas as a precautionary measure, causing supply chain disruptions and impacting migrant workers’ mobility and near-term employment prospects.
Similarities and Differences From the Two Pandemics:
These two types of pandemics were almost one- hundred years apart from one another but still had a surprising number of similarities between them. One of them being Masks and social distancing. People living during the Spanish Flu were quickly split into two camps. Those ready to take measures to restrict the spread of disease, and those who were hesitant to do so because they had a different perception of the disease so they took it more lightly, a debate that we are all too familiar with today. While there are a lot of similarities some differences include. “While people in the 21st century connect such debates to political affiliation, in the time of the Spanish Flu the main arguments against masks were alarming unsuspecting bystanders and an impediment against smoking, a far more common habit 100 years ago than now” (Senior).
Conclusion: Overall, there were a lot of similarities between the Spanish Flu of 1918 and Covid-19. Both caused a pandemic that affected the economy, and affected a lot of people’s health as well. Thankfully the economy has been recovering nicely since 2020. “The U.S. economy grew last year at its fastest pace since 1984, rebounding from a sharp but brief coronavirus-induced recession in March 2020” (Poken,1).
Work Cited
CBPP. “Tracking the COVID-19 Economy’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/tracking-the-covid-19-economys-effects-on-food-housing-and.
Kolata, Gina. “Coronavirus Is Very Different from the Spanish Flu of 1918. Here’s How.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Mar. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/health/coronavirus-is-very-different-from-the-spanish-flu-of-1918-heres-how.html.
Maas, Steve. “Social and Economic Impacts of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.” NBER, https://www.nber.org/digest/may20/social-and-economic-impacts-1918-influenza-epidemic.
Poken, Ben. “U.S. Economy Grew by 5.7 Percent Last Year, Fastest Pace since 1984.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 27 Jan. 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-economy-grew-57-2021-rebounding-2020-recession-rcna13771.
Klein, Aaron, and Ember Smith. “Explaining the Economic Impact of Covid-19: Core Industries and the Hispanic Workforce.” Brookings, Brookings, 9 Mar. 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/research/explaining-the-economic-impact-of-covid-19-core-industries-and-the-hispanic-workforce/.
Bureau, U.S. Census. “Pandemic Impact on Mortality and Economy Varies across Age Groups and Geographies.” Census.gov, 25 Mar. 2022, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/initial-impact-covid-19-on-united-states-economy-more-widespread-than-on-mortality.html.
Sanchez, Juan M. “Covid-19’s Economic Impact around the World.” Saint Louis Fed Eagle, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 23 Dec. 2021, https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/third-quarter-2021/covid19s-economic-impact-world.
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC. “United States Economic Outlook: 2020 in Review and Early 2021 Developments.” Briefing Note | Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, CEPAL, 5 May 2021, https://www.cepal.org/en/notes/united-states-economic-outlook-2020-review-and-early-2021-developments.
Senior, Rob, et al. “Similarities between Spanish Flu and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” American Nurse, 19 Jan. 2022, https://www.myamericannurse.com/similarities-between-spanish-flu-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/.
