It seems likely that it’ll be a V-shaped recession, sharp drop followed by sharp recovery, unless there’s a complete mess made of economic policy like when the Fed turned a normal economic contraction into the Great Depression. Lots of people getting temporarily sick and permanently dead doesn’t destroy much physical capital and the casualties are disproportionately borne by those least engaged in the workforce.
> The 1957 Asian Flu Pandemic killed around 70 to 100 thousand people in the United States (the 57 flu was not as infectious or deadly as COVID-19). In the last quarter of 1957 the growth rate (on an annualized basis) was -4% and in the first quarter of 1958, -10%, the largest such decline in post WWII history, bigger even than in the financial crisis. By the third and fourth quarters of 1958, however, the growth rate had surged back up to nearly 10% and for the year as a whole GDP declined by less than 1%–a bad recession, 3rd worst by depth in post WWII history, but not unprecedented.