Believe it or not, there are positive consequences to this pandemic as there have been to previous pandemics. It frees up people from restrictive ways of thinking, increases social mobility and passes wealth on from one generation to the next. Instead of spending hard-earned cash on expensive medical care to extend the lives of the old, the money can be better spent on investing back in the economy. Having fewer people takes pressure off the housing market and makes it more affordable. Less competition improves wages and opportunities for those whose labor is now in greater demand. Fortunes were made during The Black Death. The shortage of labor killed the old system of serfdom and allowed men with enterprise and willing to move, to offer their labor for hire so introduced the wage system for the first time. This in itself helped break the old class system and was the birth of capitalism. Pandemics ironically were often a good thing for the development of society though harsh because they wiped out large sections of the population. The United States was born from the effects of introducing pandemics, to which the Europeans had developed immunity, to vulnerable populations of Native Americans and thus made them less able to defend themselves against colonization. So in the long term it may not be all bad. A difficult case to argue to someone having to throw their granny into a plague pit in 1654.