> Economists are as effective as astrologists at predicting the future.

That's unfair to astrologists, economists are not going to be that good. :-)

To be fair, the better economists work by creating models based on reality. But we don't have a rich dataset about modern economies responding to pandemics. It's not that they are stupid, it's that economies are difficult to predict in general, and we don't have the data sets to give any confidence for this case.

I don't think the term "economists" refers to an easily generalizable group. In my experience there is more world-view variation among economists than one might expect looking at the differences between bayesians vs. frequentists, etc. Some economists don't embrace modeling as a means of arriving at policy recommendations at all, for instance. Others do of course, but influence doesn't seem as tied to quantitative assessments as other fields.

It's true that some use quantitative models, and some don't. But all experts use past experience as a guide. As the present becomes more different from the past, it becomes more uncertain that past experience is relevant.