Economists believe that the mental health of the younger population was worsening during the pandemic, while the prevalence of mental illness among US adults was already rising before the Covid-19 outbreak.

Danny Blanchflower

Danny Blanchflower, an author, labour economist and academic and an economics professor at Dartmouth College, tweeted on how he wanted to contribute a column on the labour market, mental health and Covid-19 to the new editor of the Prospect magazine, Alan Rusbridger.

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His paper on mental health and Covid-19 in the US tracks the mental of health of approximately 2.3 million Americans during the pandemic, as per a US Census Household Pulse Survey data for the period between April 2020 and June 2021. The survey revealed that cases relating to anxiety, worry, and depression rose in November 2020 that coincided with the Presidential election.

The data also found the use of prescription drugs for mental health conditions peaked two weeks later in December 2020. However, it was found that the mental health conditions of people improved in April 2021 as compared to a year ago.

Research further revealed that although the possibility of being diagnosed with Covid-19 did not increase sharply in the first half of 2021, Covid infection rates were found to be higher among the young than the old. Covid-19 infection rates were also found to be lower in the states that voted for Biden during the Presidential election.

Ian Bremmer

Ian Bremmer, a political scientist, author, and the president and founder of Eurasia Group, tweeted on humanity having a longstanding history of being unprepared for the worst catastrophes, whether natural or man-made before they strike, whether earthquakes, famines or pandemics. He discusses the geopolitics of disaster in a podcast with Stanford historian Niall Ferguson, as the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic and is likely to face a plethora of crises caused by climate change and what can be done to reduce the impact.

Author of DOOM, Ferguson states that he spent 2019 thinking of a book on disasters and dystopias. From his vantage point, history is one disaster after another and that it is extraordinary how history has been shaped with these enormous interruptions or disasters that always take people by surprise. When a disaster such as the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it caused an accelerated ripple effect particularly in some domains like all other historical crises.

Giving a historical perspective of the pandemic, he states that the 2020 year of Covid was not unprecedented but something people were not prepared for or probably forgotten that such crises have occurred before. For instance, there is a strikingly familiar way in which the US handled the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza with extraordinary amount of decentralisation and some states imposing stricter restrictions than others.

Dean Baker

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), retweeted an article on whether people are banking their pandemic cheques, as the economy reopens this year. In his views, the US economy is likely to experience extraordinary growth at 7% with the hardest hit sectors such as air travel and restaurants rapidly opening to services. Therefore, growth in the services sector is likely to be the strongest area of growth.

With respect to savings rates in 2020, Baker states that middle- and higher-income households who largely managed to save billions during the peak of the pandemic used the money to pay down debts. With the economy largely reopened now, it would be interesting to note how these households will spend the money accumulated during the recession.

The saving rate had averaged 7.5% in the three years prior to the recession. If people are spending the money collected during the pandemic, it would imply that the saving rate would have to fall below this level. If people continued to bank their savings, rather than spend it, it would imply that there was no reason to worry about the economy growing too rapidly in the near-term.