To me it seems likely the difference between a recession (guaranteed) and a real, extremely serious depression which will be fully capable of exacting its own toll on lives.
Second, I expect that the illness impacts will hit even broader, both in sheer numbers and crossing demographic expectations, resulting in people directly absent from work and consumption for weeks at a time.
Those are the first order effects. The second order effects on psychology among a large number of folks having loved ones dying and acquaintances suffering are going to produce some behavior changes. Some of them would be similar to those we're seeing with lockdown, but as I said, improvised rather than coordinated, probably combining some degree of the same impacts but with less of the benefits.
The recession might be milder if we trade a higher death toll. Might.
But the financial markets sure didn't think we were going to escape one even before US civil measures started ratcheting up.
[0] https://medium.com/@juliael84791135/this-isnt-a-normal-flu-i...
I expect the economic impacts to be rough either way. We don’t have a choice for “no economic impact” anymore. Either we do it in a coordinated and somewhat controlled manner now while we still have a handle on cases vs illness, or the impacts hit, roll, and peak along with the cases of illness while well/well-ish people try to improvise individual responses which probably have similar econ impacts but may not be as effective.
Or did we think that thousands on thousands falling ill at once wasn’t going to hurt economically?