Pandemics and Societal Choices (Part I) Thanks to all who participated in our first Eco 100 online meeting today. I'll post an edited recording soon. I hope to be a bit more adept with the zoom software next time (e.g. to allow more questions and participation). In this blog post, I'll summarize some of the main points. The short deck of slides I used is here . Links to the videos and sources I relied on heavily, below. We want to get to the economics of this situation but it's hard to do that without a first basic understanding of how epidemics spread and how they can end. Contagion and Exponential growth This is by no means the first global pandemic. There have been many throughout history. The last large 1918 flu pandemic killed possibly as many as 50 million people. Fortunately for us, modern medicine and communications allow us to take some more effective measures to prevent and treat people with disease, but the fast-moving nature of the epidemic c