They are specifically saying that the fact that the epidemic has ripped through the country is because the government intervened too much. Not the economic impact, simply the progression of the epidemic.

The economy did not collapse in the vast majority of countries, due to governmental intervention. Those countries also have much less infection.

> They are specifically saying that the fact that the epidemic has ripped through the country is because the government intervened too much

You're conflating things. You are making it sound like they are blaming the spread of the virus on the lockdown. It does not say that in the article. In fact, the article laments "America’s unpreparedness, the slowness of our response, and the byzantine maze of regulations." To the extent that it does blame the government for the spread, it doesn't blame it on the quarantine but on regulations preventing the medical industry from working efficiently. It does criticize the "entire nation under house arrest," but only as an outcome, distinct from part of the problems spreading the virus.

The fix for unpreparedness is not the free market, it is preparedness. Less regulation would not have fixed the issue. No country in the earth managed to curtail this pandemic using less regulation. Making the medical industry work more efficiently didn't help any country. What worked was the public sphere imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions, and distributing massive amounts of tests, in that order.

None of those problems can be fixed by less government.

Pandemics of this scale of infection rate, hospitalizations, and deaths?

Yes, the Spanish flu infected 1/3 of the world and resulted in 50 million deaths. It's possible covid-19 will get there as well but we're not anywhere close to that yet.

The Spanish flu had absolutely massive economic effects that would have undoubtedly led to a massive crisis if it wasn't for a minor event called World War One.

And the places that recovered economically the quickest are those that locked down more and earlier.

But in that case, cities that shut down earlier recovered more quickly. http://news.mit.edu/2020/pandemic-health-response-economic-r...