Read the article. Furman is comparing the pandemic to the BP oil spill (that mainly affected the Gulf states) and hurricanes, which mainly affect one or two states.
The pandemic has not only affected this WHOLE country but Europe and Asia. That's why it's called a PANdemic.
I've read other economic news that takes into account other factors:
Nouriel Roubini predicted the 2008 crash. Now, he’s warning that the America is hurtling toward food riots — and then a decade-spanning depression.
nymag.com
Worth your few precious seconds to read:
"
In September 2006, Nouriel Roubini told the International Monetary Fund what it didn’t want to hear. Standing before an audience of economists at the organization’s headquarters, the New York University professor
warned that the
U.S. housing market would soon collapse — and, quite possibly, bring the global financial system down with it......
A decade later, “
Dr. Doom” is a bear once again. While many investors bet on a “V-shaped recovery,”
Roubini is staking his reputation on an L-shaped depression. The economist does expect things to get better before they get worse: He foresees a slow, lackluster (i.e., “U-shaped”) economic rebound in the pandemic’s immediate aftermath. But he insists that this recovery will quickly collapse beneath the weight of the global economy’s accumulated debts.
Specifically, Roubini argues that
the massive private debts accrued during both the 2008 crash and COVID-19 crisis will durably depress consumption and weaken the short-lived recovery. Meanwhile, the aging of populations across the West will further undermine growth while increasing the fiscal burdens of states already saddled with hazardous debt loads. Although deficit spending is necessary in the present crisis, and will appear benign at the onset of recovery, it is laying the kindling for an inflationary conflagration by mid-decade.
As the deepening geopolitical rift between the United States and China triggers a wave of deglobalization, negative supply shocks akin those of the 1970s are going to raise the cost of real resources, even as hyperexploited workers suffer perpetual wage and benefit declines. Prices will rise, but growth will peter out, since ordinary people will be forced to pare back their consumption more and more. Stagflation will beget depression. And through it all, humanity will be beset by unnatural disasters, from extreme weather events wrought by man-made climate change to pandemics induced by our disruption of natural ecosystems.
Roubini allows that, after a decade of misery, we may get around to
developing a “more inclusive, cooperative, and stable international order.....”""""
www.politico.com
