“Can a market economy cope with the stress of a serious disease threat? We’re about to find out.”
I was thinking about the closest analogy. For me it’s the disruption of WW2. It happened both on the human level, with millions of Americans being pulled out of the workforce, and on the material level, with huge resource diversions, creating shortages of everything (and nearly bringing the country to its knees, due to lack of rubber).
So, to answer your question: We couldn’t. We needed a wartime big-brother to provide for distribution of consumer resources along with rationing. Thankfully, it all went away...then.
Rosie the Riveter is already in the workforce so who’s going to step in to replace her?