Epidemiologists have terms like R0, CFR, and IFR to describe the spread and deadliness of a virus. Similar terms could be used to describe economic contagion.

Epidemiologists have terms like R0, CFR, and IFR to describe the spread and deadliness of a virus. Similar terms could be used to describe economic contagion. When parts of the economy seize up, there are systemic risks that can spread through the system as debtors fail to make payments, causing creditors who rely on those payments to default themselves to higher level obligations. When the vast majority of an economy the size of the USA seizes up... we are in uncharted territory. The lessor of a commercial storefront can't just "defer" taking rent payment for a month or two just because they're holding property versus, say, a corporation that has to make payroll. The lessor has monthly payments of their own, likely interest payments and property taxes at the very least. While there are no shortage of estimates (arm-chair or otherwise) for the ultimate fatality rate the world will see from COVID, there have been far fewer attempts to analyze the economic fallout of wide-spread suppression measures like state-wide shelter-in-place orders. Trillions of dollars in acute losses suffered in just a few weeks will propagate through an economy, like a virus, and magnify the ultimate damages. Restarting an economy that has suffered such a shock, like restarting an electrical grid from a wide-spread outage, is something that requires tremendous care and effort. Speaking anecdotally, a SaaS business I work with which runs around ~$1 million in ARR has gone from effectively $0 in Accounts Receivable historically to over $100k in AR just this month. Every customer with a payment due has simply stopped paying their bills, as they wait to see how this will all shake out. A typical small business will have ~3 months of expenses in the bank. By the end of April, if customers haven't started paying their bills, the average small business will no longer exist. The total economic impact of small business is no less than 50% of all US employment. Experts are predicting we could see 30% unemployment next month, which equates to roughly half of all small businesses caving.