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Wartime economies created the wristwatch, aviator sunglasses, and Jeeps. Here, Joe Biden takes his aviator sunglasses off as he arrives for a campaign event with Barack Obama in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 7, 2012.
- The coronavirus outbreak has killed at least 9,700 people and infected more than 235,000 people worldwide. The US has confirmed more than 9,000 cases and 165 deaths.
- Battling the coronavirus pandemic will be like a "war," according to leaders ranging from US President Donald Trump to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to French President Emmanuel Macron.
- As the spread of the virus plunges the global economy into recession, governments worldwide are pledging billions to mitigate the fallout - and the US is no exception. But they'll need something more like a "wartime economy" to fight the pandemic and the recession at the same time.
- During World War II, the US government mobilized major industry for all the various needs of the war effort, with Ford making tanks, for example. This time around, Ford might make ventilators for US hospitals.
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Bill Gates has been warning for years that the next pandemic was imminent. In 2018, he said "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war."
The coronavirus outbreak has killed at least 9,700 people and infected more than 235,000 people worldwide. There have been 165 deaths and more than 9,000 confirmed cases in the US.
As the pandemic worsened, more and more political leaders began using "wartime" language in 2020, at first French President Emmanuel Macron and leading Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, and later US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But what is a "wartime economy?" And what would that look like for fighting a virus outbreak instead of a military conflict, in the United States of 2020? The past offers some clues, and so do the needs that wartime mobilization of the modern economy would (seek to) address.
Keep reading for a look at how the American "wartime economy" of yesteryear is taking hold in 2020.