Ten Facts about COVID-19 and the U.S. Economy

The coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created both a public health crisis and an economic crisis in the United States. The pandemic has disrupted lives, pushed the hospital system to its capacity, and created a global economic slowdown. As of September 15, 2020 there have been more than 6.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 195,000 deaths in the United States (Johns Hopkins University n.d.). To put these numbers into context, the pandemic has now claimed more than three times the American lives that were lost in the Vietnam War (Ducharme 2020; authors’ calculations). The economic crisis is unprecedented in its scale: the pandemic has created a demand shock, a supply shock, and a financial shock all at once (Triggs and Kharas 2020).

On the public health front, the spread of the virus has exhibited clear geographic trends, starting in the densely populated urban centers and then spreading to more-rural parts of the country (Desjardins 2020). Figure A shows the weekly number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in each U.S. region from late February to late August 2020. Early on, COVID-19 cases were concentrated in coastal population centers, particularly in the Northeast, with cases in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts peaking in April (Desjardins 2020). By April 9 there had been more COVID-19–related deaths in New York and New Jersey than in the rest of the United States combined (New York Times 2020). COVID-19–related deaths then peaked in the New England and Rocky Mountain regions during the third week of April, followed by the Great Lakes region in the fourth week of April, and the Mideast (excluding New York and New Jersey) and the Plains regions during the first week of May. The Southeast, Southwest, and Far West regions all experienced their peaks at the end of July and first week of August.

The COVID-19 crisis has also had differential impacts among various racial and ethnic groups. Inequities in the social determinants of health—income and wealth, health-care access and utilization, education, occupation, discrimination, and housing—are interrelated and put some racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2020c). Inequities in infectious disease outcomes are the byproduct of decades of government policies that have systematically disadvantaged Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities (Cowger et al. 2020). For example, as a result of policies that have helped to determine the location, quality, and residential density for people of color, Black and Hispanic people are clustered in the same high-density, urban locations that were most affected in the first months of the pandemic (Cowger et al. 2020; Hardy and Logan 2020). In addition, Black people and Native American people disproportionately use public transit, which has been associated with higher COVID-19 contraction rates (McLaren 2020).

Relatedly, those demographic groups came into the crisis with a higher incidence of preexisting comorbidities including hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, which also increase one’s risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19 (Yancy 2020; Ray 2020). Compared to white, non-Hispanic Americans, Black Americans are 2.6 times more likely to contract COVID-19, 4.7 times more likely to be hospitalized as a result of contracting the virus, and 2.1 times more likely to die from COVID-19–related health issues (CDC 2020b). While non-Hispanic white people are dying in the largest numbers (CDC 2020a), Black and Hispanic people are dying at much higher rates relative to their share of the U.S. population (see figure B1); moreover, this disparity is true for every age group (figure B2).