We are now at the inflection point in the Wu Flu phenomenon, where some fearless prognosticators are prophesying that the economy will never come back and others are prophesying that the economy will come back in a flash.

I dare say that the prophecies have a lot to do with whether the prophet in question leads a religious cult prophesying that Donald Trump will lose the November election or not. You tell me.

Then there are other questions. Was it really such a good idea to shut the world economy down on the basis of computer models that turned out to be wildly inaccurate? Was it such a good idea to close all the schools and thereby prevent young people from K thru grad-school from getting herd immunity?

Was it a good idea for President Trump to have daily Wu Flu news conferences so that any slips could be spun up into yet another bombshell-and-walls-closing-in moment?

Was it anything other than rampant sexism to respond to the epidemic with a girl-centric “shelter in place” policy rather than a guy-centric “march towards the sound of the guns” policy?

Should the temporary relaxation of food regulations allowing food trucks in trucking rest stops be expanded? Or is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) right to say that "The FDA must not scale back essential food-safety inspections and must maintain food-production requirements and guarantee the safety of our food supply in these trying times”.

Chuck Old Chap -- I have a question. Given the immediate publicity on any glitch in the food safety matrix in the good old USA, and the instinct of all American women to “pounce” on any safety issue on anything, and the ability of Democrat-voting lawyers to sue for billions: Are You Kidding Me?

Down the road, would it be a good idea to transform the economy based on some high-horsepower computer models predicting a climate uptick of a degree or two per century? Or should we sow the arctic with carbon black, given that the Sun may be entering another grand solar minimum? You tell me.

Is it a good thing to have “significant monitoring and speech control” on the Internet “compatible with a society’s norms and values,” or should Commoner Americans utterly reject anything that Tthe Atlantic writers propose as being utterly incompatible with their norms and values unless proved otherwise in a double-blind test?

Are we really saving lives by closing down construction jobs, which are almost all outside and conducted by young men and middle-aged men? Are we really saving lives by turning the health care system into a ghost system that is doing nothing except preparing to be overwhelmed by Chinese Flu cases long after it is evident the health care system isn’t going to be overwhelmed by Chinese Flu cases?

How many more $500 billion stimulus packages per month should Congress enact? And how much of that money should go for ruling-class pet projects and ruling-class Little Darlings?

Here’s something to get your teeth into. My usgovernmentspending.com says that federal debt has gone up a mere $1.3 trillion since the beginning of March. That’s up about 5 percent. Want to know what has gone up more? The Federal Reserve’s “total assets.” Down in the very deepest caves of the government’s money printing operation the Dwarves have increased basic money by $2.4 trillion since the end of February. That’s up 58 percent! Godfrey Daniels! Mother of Pearl!

What does that mean? You tell me.

There’s the old joke attributed to Keynesian economist Paul Samuelson, that “the stock market has predicted nine of the past five recessions.” But then, the stock market usually starts up months before the economy bottoms out of a recession. Has it also predicted nine of the last five recoveries? For instance, the S&P 500 peaked at 3,386 on February 19, bottomed out (so far) at 2,237 on March 23, and ended last week on April 24 at 2,836. So what is the stock market telling us? Whatabout oil? The networks were agog about negative prices in the oil futures market last week and oil tankers idling off the coast of California, but Exxon Mobil stock has recovered 40% since March 23 and Chevron is up 60%. I wonder what dear old John D. Rockefeller would have thought about those fragments of Standard Oil that the gubmint knew a century ago had to be broken up? You tell me.

But at least we have one thing to be thankful for in these trying times: That Joe Biden, way back in 1993, seems to have fearlessly brought sex into the digital age. I wonder what would have happened if John D. Rockefeller had digitally penetrated Ida Tarbell back in the day.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.