The economic way of thinking in a pandemic

During the pandemic, the economic way of thinking was extraordinarily useful, leading to a quick consensus among economists of widely differing political persuasions on many issues of pandemic policy. Yet speaking to politicians, bureaucrats, and the public revealed many ways in which the economic way of thinking was foreign and sometimes uncomfortable to non-economists, albeit often useful. Instructors can use pandemic policy to engage students on topics like incentives, trade-offs, utilitarianism, Bayesian reasoning, and overcoming cognitive biases.