This article appears in the April 2020 issue of Investment Executive. Subscribe to the print edition, read the digital edition or read the articles online.

There really is no upside to the Covid-19 outbreak. The best the investment industry can hope to do is help clients ride out the storm and learn critical lessons for the future.

Economic activity is virtually at a standstill. And there seem to be no good alternatives. An end to social distancing efforts in order to restart the economy — even if the cost is countless human lives and a functional health-care system — would impose its own economic penalty, as widespread illness undermines growth, much like the voluntary action wreaking havoc now.

Much of the current economic and financial turmoil was accurately predicted in an unusual research report published in August 2005 by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.

In that report, two of the firm’s star analysts — then-chief economist Sherry Cooper and then-global portfolio strategist Don Coxe — imagined the effects of a global pandemic akin to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-20.

The report suggested the economic fallout from a global public health emergency could rival the Great Depression of the 1930s. If that seems grim, the report concluded that the only potential “winners” from an economic perspective will be “funeral homes and other ‘death-related’ businesses” — along with drug companies and private medical facilities.

From an investor viewpoint, the Nesbitt report stated, the only beneficiaries are likely to be those who hoarded cash before the crisis and used it to buy real estate, businesses and other assets on the cheap from distressed owners.

While that report was pitched as a guide for investors at the time, its real objective was to call attention to an outsized risk, and to alert governments to the urgent need to plan for, and finance, public health efforts.

The report also argued for acknowledging the universal human condition: “Forget the ‘each man for himself’ psychology of protectionist and anti-globalization rhetoric. Like it or not, we are all in this together, and we are all dragged downward by the weakest links.”

Hopefully, when the Covid-19 crisis is finally in the rear-view mirror, its lessons about risk, planning and immense collective consequences will not soon be forgotten.

For now, though, the priority is survival. Stay safe.