Covid doom predictions that never happened

[BootinUp]

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Five prophecies of economic ruin that thankfully didn't come to pass

Noah Smith
21 hr ago

Unfortunately, many of the bad predictions about COVID-19 came true. The people who saw cases ramping up exponentially, and warned that this was going to be a mass death event, were right, while the people who minimized the threat and waved it away were wrong. And a lot of people are dead because we didn’t listen to the former.

But economic predictions are a different story. When unemployment spiked to Great Depression levels in the early days of lockdown, it seemed to me — and to many, many others — like this downturn was destined to turn into a decade of mass economic hardship. Fortunately, that was completely off the mark! I got it very wrong and Paul Krugman got it right — with no financial crisis and no big overhang of debt, the economy simply wasn’t destined for a repeat of 2008-12. Though the recovery has proven bumpy thus far, but most economists still forecast a relatively swift return to the pre-pandemic growth trend.


In fact, this was one of many predictions of economic doom that failed to materialize. Here’s a quick list of a few others.

1) Suicides fell
Suicides had been rising in the U.S. for years prior to the pandemic, and many people predicted that the stress and isolation of lockdown would send the rate soaring even higher. An article in JAMA Psychiatry in April 2020 predicted:

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https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/covid-doom-predictions-that-never

[BigmanPigman]

1. This week MSNBC said that teenage female suicides increased

a lot, around 40% while their make counterparts only increased less than 10%. I tried to find the statistics after I saw the MSNBC show but none of the research shows where they got these numbers.