Covid-19 is causing a severe recession after an economic boom built upon a foundation left shaky by the Great Recession. Similarly, did the influenza pandemic of WW1 lay the groundwork for the Great Depression after the even-shakier Roarin’ 20s boom? What’s next now? And what can we learn?

Construction booms in Seattle, the once Emerald City now known as the City of Cranes. Yet high rates of homelessness left over from the Great Recession and the Occupy revolts has led to a dead-end of cynicism, apathy, and despair ravaged by an opioid epidemic. The increase in employment masks over the high number of jobs considered dead-end, part-time, low-wage, reduced benefits, or regions scarred by stagnant economies and dead industries. So many barriers to progress! Even in a boom city! Foto by the Author, Monday 2 April 2018.

Was the “Spanish flu,” a disease pandemic whose awful memory was shoved aside by the Roaring 20s, a so-called Invisible Hand? A negative, indeed a “dead” invisible hand of capitalism at that? What lessons are relevant for us today as the new coronavirus recession arrives so soon after the Great Recession? If history does tend to repeat itself, then it helps to remember what’s often forgotten.

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