During a pandemic, what factors might shift the aggregate-supply curve to the left? What factors might shift the aggregate-demand curve to the left?

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The Answer is During a societal crisis, there is a strong probability that supply and demand curves will shift, to a comparatively greater degree (particularly during a pandemic), within a given economy. In the case of a pervasive, global pandemic, there are numerous contributing factors to aggregate-supply and aggregate-demand curve movements. Supply curves shift leftward when both workers and production materials are in relatively shorter supply. When a pandemic involves airborne particulate pathogens, there must necessarily be greater space and/or physical distance between workers from a preventative care standpoint, so fewer workers should be in the same space. Diminished numbers of workers in said space are going to produce fewer goods, which ultimately leads to a leftward-shifting supply curve. Then, as the materials needed to produce other relevant goods (intermediate goods) are cranked out at relatively slower rates, the final products are limited in manufactured scale. Think about the factories that make the elastic bands for N95 masks - they must cut their workforce to combat the spread of the virus, so they make fewer bands. Accordingly, the next factory, which assembles the masks, must then wait longer for the materials, so fewer masks are made, and so on. On the demand side, one particularly salient example involves the service industry, especially as the weather gets colder and colder. Fewer and fewer restaurants and bars are in a position to operate at full capacity, already having been hindered by shelter-in-place and quarantine regulations. As consumers are both subject to government regulations, and disinclined to increase their own risk of catching the virus, they consume less, such that the demand for service industry goods plummets. In turn, this shifts the overall demand curve to the left.

During a Pandemic, What Factors Might Shift the Aggregate-Supply Curve