Lasting blow to supply capacity is not inevitable

It is by no means inevitable that the coronavirus crisis puts a big permanent hole in the supply capacity of economies (i.e. their ability to produce goods and services). With the right government policies, many economies should be able more or less to revert to the path of output they were on before the crisis. Nonetheless, with demand likely to be slow to recover fully, this could still take several years. And there will be several important exceptions to this generally optimistic picture.