> As precedent, I cite the 1918 flu. In 1918 people were getting arrested for not wearing masks. The following decade was called "The Roaring '20s," and I don't presume it roared because of all the social distancing and masks. All of us reading were born later, and if we heard about the 1918 flu, maybe in a history class as I remember, most of us probably reacted with ... "what? what's so bad about a flu?"
You can't compare pandemics — nothing happens in a vacuum. It's 2020. The Spanish flu was shroud by WWI. The Roaring 20s was a post-war boom, meanwhile we haven't even fought the upcoming Sino war. Most haven't experienced such economic hardship in their lives. Globalisation was a pipe dream a century ago, it's now the backbone of every developed economy.