Conclusion: Public Health and Public Goods

Summary

Effects that the pandemic will have can scarcely be predicted yet. Many will doubtless pass once the disease has been tamed. Others are likely to become permanent. It seems unlikely that air travel will remain entirely as it was before. Or that work will not have been affected. Will cities recover? Many of the pandemic’s effects will probably be ambiguous. The environment will be helped by the decline of travel but hurt by the shift of travel to private means from public. Deficit financing by governments will have been increased, perhaps permanently. Our toleration of statutory intervention may have increased; indeed, many are disappointed by its lacks, while others decry its excesses. Zoonotic diseases will finally have become recognized as a serious threat to humanity.