Maybe it isn't correct to compare upcoming crisis with already experienced ones. Some experts are sure that it will be like 2008 recession, I mean 2020 crisis will last more than a couple of months.
there are still too many unknowns at this point. it takes a few weeks to see real results from lockdowns and self quarantines. testing is also primarily only being done on symptomatic cases so we still know very little about how far this thing has spread, and how infectious it really is. those things obviously have a lot of bearing on the future economic costs of the pandemic.
i found this post illuminating---also a bit depressing, since it casts doubt on these "back to normal by april" theories:
The only way an early back-to-work works out well is if some of the more fringe epidemiology theories circulating hold and that the virus really has a R0 of 23 and a very low hospitalization rate and in fact a huge number of people have already been infected. Existing data doesn't completely disprove this theory as far as I know but the growth rates of hospitalizations we've seen are pretty strong evidence against it. (If it were really the case that the virus was ludicrously infectious but just hospitalized very few people we would have seen the hospitalization rates spike much faster and everywhere almost at once). I think these sorts of high R0 low-hospitalization rate theories are just hopeful fantasy. There has been a lot of hopeful fantasy being thrown about by people who really don't want to face the reality-- this one is just a little less innumerate than most of them.
Yes.. I expect at least 6 months..! the average crisis as I comment on the video