The timeline below uncovers a fascinating point: the surge in economic uncertainty that has been so closely associated with the Covid-19 pandemic actually began before the pandemic. Economic uncertainty discussion on US business television channels began ramping upwards from Spring 2018, peaking in Fall 2019 and ramping down through the early months of the pandemic before leveling off and then declining sharply in late 2020, but began increasing again from the middle of last year.

This is a critical contextualizing insight when considering the economic impact of Covid-19: the pandemic didn't break a period of calm, it occurred in the midst of a decade-long high in uncertainty that had begun two years earlier.