I think it was more sandbagging than snowballing. The pain was spread out, and mostly delayed, which kept the economy moving despite everything.

Remember that most of the economy is actually hidden from the stock market, its most visible metric. Over half the business is privately-owned small businesses, and at the local level forcibly shutting down all but essential-service shops was devastating. Without government spending, it's hard to imagine how most of those business owners and their employees would have survived, let alone their shops.

Yet we had no bread lines, no (increase in) migratory families chasing cash labor markets, and demands on charity organizations were heavy, but not overwhelming.

But you claim "a country should handle a pandemic better..." - what should we have done instead? Criticism is easy.

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