The economics of responding to pandemics

As we approach the close of this worrisome year, it will be one that few will have regrets in seeing the end of. Eleven months on from the first signs of Covid-19 becoming apparent in China (although those immersed in the epidemiology had some inklings 12 months ago), and 9 months since it started to dawn on the western world, that unlike past epidemics, this would hit them, there remain mammoth unknowns about how to deal with it, and how to respond, especially in terms of economic policies.