For economists, this has been a year observing how most workers were, at the least, forced to change how they interact with the workplace - for many millions more it’s meant furlough or unemployment.  The pandemic also closed supply chains, but never resulted in significant food shortages. It did, however, show the value of self-sufficiency with vaccine production. And perhaps most significantly the pandemic showed the power of the state at a time of international calamity - government spending has filled the gaps that Covid made in the economy, albeit at immense fiscal cost. So economists now have more evidence to show what works, and what doesn’t, when an economy unexpectedly closes down. 

In his book “Economics in One Virus”, Ryan Bourne looks at some of the economic questions that Covid threw at us, and analyses society’s responses. Ryan works at the Cato Institute in Washington DC - this think-tank is libertarian in its outlook, and his...

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