Friday, March 27, 2020

Coronavirus News (18)

Cuomo: Not sure if closing all businesses, keeping everyone home was 'the best public health strategy'
How small-business owners and the self-employed can take advantage of the coronavirus stimulus package Congress recently passed a $2 trillion stimulus package, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Securities Act (CARES), that includes expanding unemployment insurance to self-employed workers and independent contractors. The bill extends unemployment benefits for 13 more weeks and also includes an additional $600 a week on top of state unemployment benefits for up to four months. The rate of state pay may be less for self-employed, independent contractors, and freelance workers........ Network, network, network: “The worst thing you can do right now is stop communicating” ....... “Talk to your clients, talk to your audience. Put out the word on Facebook that you’re still open for business.” ....... Now is a good time to make changes. Think about ways to operate more efficiently. Review your marketing materials and see what needs updating. Think about your technology and social media accounts. And consider the future and what updates you’ll need to make to your business to address the new way of life after a pandemic ....... Consider a side hustle like online tutoring or making deliveries. Or take an aspect of your own business and shape it into something people need now. “Advertise locally and drum up some extra cash for things people are craving during this time of being shut in and distanced from others”



Indian migrant workers could undermine the world's largest lockdown India may still have fewer than 1,000 cases but the fear of pandemic has caused panic buying and attacks on front line medical staff. ...... Doctors and nurses in the capital New Delhi told CNN that they have been ostracized and discriminated against by their communities over fears that they could bring home the virus after work. Some doctors have even been threatened with eviction or having their electricity cut off....... "Many doctors are now stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country," said one letter from the Resident Doctors' Association of New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah.



How the Covid-19 recession could become a depression

As the Covid-19 pandemic worsens, it’s hard to decide which are scarier: the conversations I’m having with epidemiologists or the conversations I’m having with economists.

....... The mistake the US made in 2008 was not spending enough. We underestimated the size of the output gap, and then passed a stimulus too small to fill it. When the Obama administration returned to Congress for more fiscal ammunition, Republicans refused, and the recovery limped rather than roared. ......... There’s only one equilibrium: It’s economic inactivity until the danger passes.” ........ There will be at least four waves of economic pain, he told me, each building on the last. Wave one is “the sudden stop,” the unexpected cessation of economic activity all across the country ....... When the economy stops, and GDP plummets, workers lose their jobs. That, Zandi said, is wave two, and “it’s coming very quickly.” ....... On Sunday, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said unemployment could reach 30 percent, and GDP could drop by 50 percent. ...... The third wave, according to Zandi, will be “all these folks who’ve seen their nest egg wiped out. They thought they were set for retirement and they’re not. They’ll go into panic mode.” ....... Wave four, Zandi continues, will see businesses cut investment. ........ But if the virus is brought under control in May, and Congress passes enough stimulus, Zandi, and other forecasters, think powerful catch-up growth in the third and fourth quarters is possible. Perhaps this could be

a “V-shaped” recession: a sharp drop followed by a swift recovery

. ........ The nightmare scenario is that the virus isn’t under control by the summer, and extreme social distancing measures are needed throughout the year ....... the ground could collapse underneath the economy. ....... Another possibility is a financial crisis, in which the markets for corporate debt or government bonds or international currency flows lock up, and create a contagion of their own. Already we’re seeing signs of strain: strange movements in municipal bond markets, shortages of dollars, and corporate debt markets. If any of these collapse into panic, we could add a 2008-style financial crisis atop our 2020-style economic and public health crisis. If that happens, says Zandi, “then you get into very dark scenarios — you start getting three, four, five years of financial pain.” ....... “It’s not cyclical unemployment. It’s quarantine unemployment. Businesses aren’t allowed to operate. People aren’t allowed to be out of their home. The idea that if you just give people money it’ll somehow prevent the unemployment rate from skyrocketing makes no sense. No amount of demand stimulus will get people to go to restaurants if they’re closed.” ........ delivering up to $18,000 to families of four and sustaining the aid so long as the public health emergency continues or unemployment is elevated ....... the closest comparison to the economy we’re creating now is the economy of World War II: The government was spending huge amounts of money on the war effort, but wages were suppressed, goods were rationed, the public was pressured into buying bonds, and social norms discouraged excessive consumption. ......... If those businesses collapse in mass numbers, then even when the health risks pass, the labor market will be in shambles, as there won’t be jobs for workers to return to. ......... In a more imaginative country, with a more ambitious and capable political system, crisis could become opportunity: This could be the moment to pass a true Green New Deal, taking advantage of cheap money and idle workers to solve perhaps the central problem of our future. If this economy must collapse, perhaps we could build something better, fairer, more sustainable in its place. “I hope this will cause a seismic political change,” says Sen. Bennet. “I think this is going to make us realize we need to invest again in America.”

This calculator tells you exactly how big your coronavirus stimulus check could be
Coronavirus: Trump makes thinly veiled attack at AOC during White House briefing
Coronavirus measures could cause global food shortage, UN warns
Coronavirus strikes UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his health secretary and his chief medical adviser
As coronavirus cases spike worldwide, China is closing itself off
Coronavirus pandemic's global impact seen from space in chilling satellite images
'It’s what was happening in Italy': the hospital at the center of New York's Covid-19 crisis New York is the center of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, and Elmhurst hospital in the New York City borough of Queens is the center of the center. ...... the medical examiner’s office has stationed a refrigerated trailer to act as a makeshift morgue. ...... there were 23,112 Covid-19 cases in New York City alone ....... The hospital is located in one of the poorest and most diverse areas of the city, home to 20,000 recent immigrants from 112 different countries. It was already operating at 80% capacity before the coronavirus pandemic ....... In the Elmhurst and the

nearby Corona neighborhood

, one in four people lack health insurance. One in four live in poverty. ..... “Doctors describe scenes in apocalyptic terms. Patients are reportedly dying in the emergency room still waiting for a bed. Residents line the block, standing inside barricades and in the rain waiting to get tested.”

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