Europe after Covid-19: Back to the old normal, but with steroids?

It is now clear that in Europe, as elsewhere, neither health services nor social protection systems were in place when Covid-19 hit. The European "project" is again being tested. Cross-border restrictions on the sacrosanct free mobility of goods and labor are easier to justify than the emergence of nationalism, trade protectionism and "viral enabling political acts" as those introduced in Poland and Hungary.
The future course of events is uncertain. Still, as they should, economists are trying their best to use the forecasts from epidemiologists to assess the (sad) trade-off between imminent deaths versus ending physical distancing and opening up the economy. For guidance, they are drawing lessons from the global financial crisis of 2008 and, for Europe, from the euro crisis. Neither, however, is really comparable to the situation today. The cause of the former was the...