With economists declaring that a recession has already begun, New York City possibly on the verge of issuing a “shelter in place” order, and the White House saying that it wants to issue checks directly to all Americans, the coronavirus crisis is breaking new ground by the day. The vast U.S. economy has been subjected to some enormous shocks before—the Great Crash of 1929, 9/11, and the financial crisis of 2008 immediately come to mind—but has there ever been a sudden stop comparable to this?

When I put this question to Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday, he said that he couldn’t think of one. Something that originated as “supply shock” in China, just a couple of months ago, has morphed into an unprecedented economic shutdown, remarkable not just for its size but for its rapidity. Eichengreen, who specializes in economic history and is the author of more than a dozen books, including a highly regarded history of the Great Depression, said that he is working on the assumption that consumer spending will fall about thirty per cent in the second quarter of 2020. That would be unprecedented.

The Great Depression, which began after the stock market crashed in October, 1929, was wrenching and disastrous, of course. But Eichengreen pointed out that it developed more gradually than the coronavirus shock. “The production of goods and services fell by about a third, but over a period of three-plus years,” he said. “Industrial production fell by half, but, again, over a period of three years. The unemployment rate rose to about one in four, but over four years. Now what we are talking about is the possibility that the unemployment rate could shoot up very dramatically in a very short period of time.” According to the New York Times, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has told congressional Republicans that, absent an aggressive policy response, the jobless rate could reach twenty per cent.

At least in the modern era, the economic impact of other pandemics simply doesn’t compare with what is happening now. During the great flu of 1918, more than half a million Americans died, according to some studies, and certain cities closed restaurants and other public gathering places, in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus. Eichengreen said that the pandemic “had a big negative impact on retail sales,” but, according to the available statistics, the over-all economy didn’t fall into a recession. There was eventually a slump, in 1920-21, but Eichengreen and other economic historians have typically attributed it to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to head off inflation.

Still, Eichengreen insisted that both the 1918 pandemic and the economic cataclysm of the nineteen-thirties had things to teach us in confronting the coronavirus. In the case of the great flu, he said, “I draw the lesson that it is really important to do the lockdown in a comprehensive way.” He pointed out that mortality rates varied from city to city. Some places, such as St. Louis, reacted aggressively to the crisis and managed to slow the rate of infection. Other cities—for example, Philadelphia—reacted too late and too lightly, with disastrous results. According to one study, Philadelphia’s fatality rates at the height of the epidemic were eight times as high as those in St. Louis.

The Great Depression, horrible as it was, served as a giant laboratory experiment for two policy approaches. As the economy slumped between 1929 and 1932, the Administration of Herbert Hoover eschewed large-scale efforts to boost federal spending and rescue stricken industries. Once F.D.R. took over, in 1933, he pursued a far more activist approach. His Administration provided cash payments to farmers, debt relief for mortgage holders, public-works projects for the unemployed, and low-interest loans to stricken banks and railroads. The Roosevelt Administration also abandoned the gold standard, so that monetary policy could be relaxed, and eventually introduced a system of unemployment insurance and Social Security. “The scholarship on the Great Depression suggests that, when both fiscal and monetary policies, as well as strategic interventions in specific industries, were undertaken, we got stabilization and recovery,” Eichengreen said. “But not in the preceding period, when there was a more piecemeal approach.”

This time last week, Eichengreen feared that, once again, the federal government was failing to rise to the challenge at a critical juncture. But then the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and rolled out a series of emergency-lending programs. By Tuesday, when the White House proposed a trillion-dollar rescue package—which would provide cash payments to all American households and financial assistance to businesses devastated by the shutdowns—Eichengreen was a bit more encouraged. “There are signs that people, including our fearless leaders, have now recognized the gravity of the situation,” he said. “It looks like the necessary steps have been taken on the monetary side and probably will be taken on the fiscal side.”

That remains to be seen, of course. The individual elements of the stimulus package have yet to be finalized. One that is sure to spark some controversy is the proposal to bail out the airlines. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump Administration wants to give the industry fifty billion dollars in financial assistance. This money will probably be in the form of loans, but will such loans be unsecured, as the airline industry wants? Or will they be secured on the carriers’ assets, such as airplanes and valuable landing slots, so that the government can seize these assets if the loans aren’t repaid? During the nineteen-thirties, Eichengreen reminded me, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency that Hoover set up and F.D.R. greatly expanded, lent money to the banks and the railroads, both of which were in very poor shape. “The loans to the railroads were secured by their rolling stock,” Eichengreen said. “And that would seem to me to be the most appropriate model to follow now.”

Even if the Trump Administration were to take this advice, bailing out the airlines, or other large corporations, could generate a political backlash. Eichengreen suggested that the popular reaction might not be quite as bitter as it was when the Obama Administration rescued Wall Street, in 2008 and 2009, because this time the federal government is also proposing substantial assistance for households and small businesses. Eichengreen thinks that the Trump Administration should consider an additional policy move, which the Italian government recently adopted: suspending mortgage payments and other loan payments. “If you lose your car or lose your home through no fault of your own, that is a personal hardship,” Eichengreen said. “But it is also something that will ramify through the rest of the economy.”

The White House would have to force banks and other lenders to go along with a suspension of loan payments. That would represent an additional level of government activism, one that Eichengreen believes the circumstances demand. “The U.S. approach to these things has almost always been—it was Herbert Hoover’s during the Great Depression—let’s ask enlightened bankers to do the right thing and voluntarily forgive late payments and suspend penalties, and so forth,” he said. “Hopefully, we are moving fast in recognizing that voluntarism and enlightened capitalism, while desirable, may not be enough.”

A Guide to the Coronavirus