It's a revision of history to suggest that government-imposed lockdowns are the only thing that caused the economy to stall. If you recall in the United States

It's a revision of history to suggest that government-imposed lockdowns are the only thing that caused the economy to stall. If you recall in the United States at least, not much had really changed until the NBA, a private organization, suspended play on their own on 3/11 [1]. Then the floodgates opened as other private organizations followed suit. The first government shutdown orders then came from San Francisco on 3/16 [2] and New York followed suit on 3/20 [3]. You can see in [4] that consumer spending patterns were changing well before lockdown orders were issued. In fact, consumer spending falls off a cliff the day the NBA suspended its season, which was also when the US stopped all flights to Europe. I don't think anyone argues that stopping travel to Covid hotzones was a bad idea, right? You can see that people starting to eat out less the first week of March, whereas lockdowns really came into full swing around the end of March. Did lockdowns impact the economy? Sure. But you can't say the economy would be inflation-free and there would be no shortages or supply chain failures if no lockdowns were imposed. [1] https://www.nba.com/news/coronavirus-pandemic-causes-nba-suspend-season https://www.nba.com/news/coronavirus-pandemic-causes-nba-sus... [2] https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-public-health-order-requiring-residents-stay-home-except-essential https://sfmayor.org/article/san-francisco-issues-new-public-... [3] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2020-03-20-Notice-New-York-on-Pause-Order.pdf https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2020-03-20-... [4] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-u-s-consumers-are-spending-differently-during-covid-19/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-u-s-consumers-are-spend...