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22 April 2021

A Dark Pandemic Year Could Still Portend a Brighter Future

By Charles Kenny

At last, the United States appears to be entering the recovery phase from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects. A national vaccination drive is already significantly reducing mortality. The administration of President Joe Biden has announced a sweeping infrastructure bill to follow its $1.7 trillion stimulus package, together likely to lift many economic indicators, from gross domestic product to child poverty. And China is even further along: that country had largely controlled viral spread by March 2020, and its output bounced back by the fourth quarter of last year.

Green shoots in the world’s two largest economies are signs that the world as a whole might be poised for a strong recovery from the deepest peacetime recession since the Great Depression. There are many developments that could derail this trajectory—among them, new vaccine-resistant virus variants or a new Cold War. But many indicators suggest that a decade that opened

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