Easter never felt more Eastery. The world economy looks dead. Can it be resurrected? Just over a century ago, amid the worst flu pandemic in history, the greatest economist of his generation fell ill. John Maynard Keynes was in Paris, attending the peace conference that would in time produce the Treaty of Versailles. Having collapsed on May 30, 1919, he wrote to his mother: “Partly out of misery and rage for all that’s happening and partly from prolonged overwork, I gave way last Friday and took to my bed from sheer nervous exhaustion, where I have remained ever since.”

He remained prostrate for close to a week, getting up only for meetings with the prime minister, David Lloyd George, and “a daily stroll in the