Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. The Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Asian Flu of 1957 eventually ended, without shutdowns of the economy. China never shut down, they have barely counted any COVID-19 deaths as coronavirus-related since last spring, and the rest of Asia is abandoning the Zero COVID goal. Should the US do the same?

In The Economist, data analysts looked at data from the 14th century on and found that historical pandemics led to lower inflation. Yet inflation in the US has risen 6 percent despite the economy being in freefall, with GDP down 9%. Which means if something does not change we will have the same "stagflation" that plagued America during the Carter administration.