Millions of Americans who object to the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have spent the last two weeks celebrating his defeat. Amid the revelry, more news hit: first Pfizer and now Moderna have developed vaccines that they report are over 90 percent effective in protecting against the virus. To many, it appears there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

If we can stop the spread of the virus, that will be a triumph in itself — the sooner we can distribute a vaccine, the more lives will be saved. But recent economic figures complicate a rosy picture of the future. The incoming presidential administration will inherit a ravaged job market: the nation is down ten million jobs from the beginning of the pandemic, more than eleven million if you factor in the predicted job growth that was thwarted by the crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted deep wounds in the US economy, wounds that will leave lasting scars unless the Biden administration makes an unlikely break with Biden’s own tradition of austerity.

The millions of lost jobs will not be automatically restored when all lockdowns end and all businesses reopen, as many already have. Something like that might have happened if the United States had opted to follow in the footsteps of many European countries and “deep freeze” the economy with social spending to replenish income and preserve jobs, allowing it to safely “thaw out” at the end of the health crisis. But the tightfisted — well, tightfisted unless you’re a massive corporation or wealthy individual — US government did not take that route. The consequence of that decision is that pandemic-induced job losses will likely take a long time to recover from.