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Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day twenty four

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Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today, Germany has

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Speaker 1: been seen as having a model government response to the pandemic.

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Speaker 1: Some have compared it to countries like Italy, where the

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Speaker 1: virus spread like wildfire after governments took too long to act,

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Speaker 1: but that comparison may be unfair and Germany's fate may

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Speaker 1: be about to change. But first, here's what happened today.

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Speaker 1: How Speaker Nancy Pelosi scaled back her ambitions for Congress's

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Speaker 1: next coronavirus stimulus package. She wants to focus on making

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Speaker 1: more direct payments to individual and expanding loans to businesses.

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Speaker 1: On CNN today, she said she still cared about infrastructure,

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Speaker 1: but would possibly leave that and other democratic priorities for

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Speaker 1: a later bill. Pelosi said the three and fifty billion

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Speaker 1: dollars in the last stimulus meant to keep small business

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Speaker 1: afloat for two months won't be enough. She also said

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Speaker 1: people would need an extension of the expanded unemployment benefits

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Speaker 1: after data showed an unprecedented wave of new unemployment claims

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Speaker 1: in the last two weeks. So I'd like to go

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Speaker 1: right back and say, let's look at that bill, let's

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Speaker 1: update it for what with some other things that we need,

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Speaker 1: and again put money in the pockets of the American people,

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Speaker 1: another direct payment extending we had unemployment at six months

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Speaker 1: in our bill, it's four. Let's take it to six

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Speaker 1: for the unemployment so that people have that confidence. US

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Speaker 1: employment plunged last month, offering a first look at the

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Speaker 1: devastation the coronavirus pandemic has already been on trek on

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Speaker 1: the once strong labor market. Pay Rolls fell seven and

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Speaker 1: one thousand from the prior month, according to the Labor Department.

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Speaker 1: That data mainly covers the early part of March, before

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Speaker 1: widespread shutdowns forced firms to lay off millions more workers.

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Speaker 1: The jobless rate jumped to four point four, the highest since.

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Speaker 1: Economists say it will surge above ten in the coming months.

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Speaker 1: The US is expected to suggest Americans consider wearing face

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Speaker 1: coverings in public. That's a shift from what health officials

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Speaker 1: had previously recommended. Along with some other countries, US authorities

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Speaker 1: had discouraged anyone outside of hospitals from wearing masks, but

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Speaker 1: more and more officials are reconsidering that guidance. Doctor Anthony Faucci,

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Speaker 1: the top infectious disease expert in the US, said on

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Speaker 1: Fox News Friday that asks can help when people are

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Speaker 1: unable to keep six feet of distance from each other

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Speaker 1: with certain necessities of life, going out to get food,

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Speaker 1: while going to a pharmacy to get your medications, that

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Speaker 1: you may inadvertently come into closer contact. Because of that,

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Speaker 1: and because of some recent information that the virus can

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Speaker 1: actually be spread even when people just speak, as opposed

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Speaker 1: to coughing and sneezing, the better part of valor is

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Speaker 1: that when you're out and you can't maintain that six

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Speaker 1: foot distance, to wear some sort of facial covering. In Europe,

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Speaker 1: Spain reported the first decline in new coronavirus fatalities in

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Speaker 1: four days, while the UK had its deadliest day yet.

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Speaker 1: Germany's Angela Merkel ended her self quarantine, while UK Prime

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Speaker 1: Minister Boris Johnson still has symptoms and will continue to

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Speaker 1: self isolate. The city state of Singapore will shutter schools

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Speaker 1: and most workplaces, shifting away from an approach that limited

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Speaker 1: interruptions to daily life and commerce. That's after confirmed cases

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Speaker 1: of local transmission and unlinked infections in the country rose

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Speaker 1: in recent weeks. Now to today's main story, Italy has

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Speaker 1: been among the hardest hit countries by the pandemic, an

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Speaker 1: outbreak epicenter. Italy's cases are at nearly one twenty thousand,

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Speaker 1: with over fourteen thousand deaths as of Friday, April three.

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Speaker 1: In recent weeks, Italy's mortality rate from coronavirus had reached

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Speaker 1: as high as nine point five it sobering evidence of

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Speaker 1: how deadly the virus can be. And yet just to

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Speaker 1: the north, Germany seemed like it was escaping the worst

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Speaker 1: of the outbreak by enacting widespread testing and taking the

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Speaker 1: virus serious lee Earlier, with few cases and until recently

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Speaker 1: a mortality rate that hovered under one percent, Germany appeared

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Speaker 1: to be a model of how to successfully navigate the crisis.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the US now has more than double Italy's cases,

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Speaker 1: and experts predict the country will see hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of deaths before the pandemic subsides. Many have wondered whether

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Speaker 1: the US could have escaped in Italy like fate if

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Speaker 1: it followed measures similar to Germany, But now there's some

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Speaker 1: doubt about whether Germany is really a COVID nineteen success

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Speaker 1: story compared to Italy's cautionary tale. Over the last week,

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Speaker 1: Germany's mortality rate from the virus has crept higher, a

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Speaker 1: troubling indicator that the country may not have evaded serious

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Speaker 1: trouble yet. To understand how the virus is affecting different

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Speaker 1: European countries, I recently spoke with Bloomberg's Naomi Kreski from

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Speaker 1: my makeshift home studio in Toronto. Naomi is in Germany,

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Speaker 1: where you can hear the sounds of family life in

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Speaker 1: the background, from under a blanket in Canada to under

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Speaker 1: a blanket in Germany. Naomi, thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 1: What I really wanted to dig in here is about

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Speaker 1: these what looked like very startling differences among countries in

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Speaker 1: terms of cases and of course death rates in Europe.

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Speaker 1: I think the major examples have been Italy versus Germany.

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Speaker 1: Why do you think the death rates in Germany and

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Speaker 1: Italy are are so different? To some extent In Germany,

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Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is the effect of broad, broad

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Speaker 1: testing that the German government has done. They are now

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Speaker 1: testing some fifty thousand people a day for coronavirus. They're

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Speaker 1: they're going out and they're testing people who are not

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Speaker 1: that sick, people who are not showing up at the

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Speaker 1: hospital because they're very ill. Um they're following sort of

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Speaker 1: chains of disease and by finding the people who have

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Speaker 1: been in contact with people who were sick with coronavirus

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Speaker 1: and testing them if they show any symptoms at all.

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Speaker 1: And so partly as a result of that, you have

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Speaker 1: an age curve in Germany that just looks totally different

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Speaker 1: than the age curve of people who have the virus

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Speaker 1: in Italy or also in Spain, which is another place

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Speaker 1: in Europe that has had a tremendous number of people

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Speaker 1: die from coronavirus. You raised two really important points there,

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Speaker 1: and that it is a testing question and there is

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Speaker 1: at least a demographic and age demographic to consider there.

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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering, is this explained at all by how

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Speaker 1: generations lived together actually in Germany versus Italy. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a super interesting question. So they're actually some academics who

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Speaker 1: have already started looking at at this and trying to

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Speaker 1: find some correlations, and they're just correlations at this point.

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Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, but what we can say

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Speaker 1: is that more than of Italians between the ages of

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Speaker 1: thirty and forty nine, so sort of prime time to

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Speaker 1: be traveling, picking up the virus from somewhere out, you know,

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Speaker 1: meeting people UM getting germs. More than of these people

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Speaker 1: live with their parents, and that is more than double

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Speaker 1: the rate for Germans in that same age bracket. So

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Speaker 1: a pair of economists from Bond University actually looked at

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Speaker 1: this and found a correlation between generations living under one

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Speaker 1: roof and case fatality for coronavirus. What what are if

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Speaker 1: any lessons we can take from the Germany and Italy examples, Well,

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Speaker 1: sort of a twofold lesson UM. On the one hand,

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Speaker 1: Um the the economists who are looking at this, and

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Speaker 1: they suggested that in countries where this kind of multi

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Speaker 1: generational living is common, so in Europe that would be

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Speaker 1: places like Greece or bulk Area, Poland Serbia, places where

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Speaker 1: families often share a house or share an apartment, that

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Speaker 1: these countries should move swiftly to protect the elderly. Some

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Speaker 1: countries have spoken about school closures as one way to

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Speaker 1: do this. If you can prevent um children from passing

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Speaker 1: it among themselves and then taking it home and passing

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Speaker 1: it to their to to their older relatives. The second

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Speaker 1: thing to to maybe look at in this context is

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Speaker 1: um for countries where elderly people are not living together

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Speaker 1: with their families. UM. But this is one reason why

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Speaker 1: nursing homes, for example in in the US have closed

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Speaker 1: down their visiting hours, have said that families can't come

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Speaker 1: and visit older frail p bowl and are you know,

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Speaker 1: taking people's temperature at the door when they come in

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Speaker 1: and testing workers on a day to day basis just

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Speaker 1: this effort to try to prevent the virus from sort

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Speaker 1: of being unleashed among this really frail population. Early on

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Speaker 1: it looked like Germany was really going to escape this thing,

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Speaker 1: and and Italy was almost immediately hit hard and became

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Speaker 1: one of these epicenters of the global outbreak. How has

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Speaker 1: that perception perhaps changed in the last week, UM, Is

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Speaker 1: it's still that we're looking to Germany to say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: there are a model that we can imitate in some

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Speaker 1: way to hopefully tamp down the curve, and what can

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Speaker 1: we avoid doing using Italy as perhaps a warning example?

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Speaker 1: Is that still the case? From the beginning, public health

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Speaker 1: authorities in Germany warned that the death rate here would

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Speaker 1: also rise, and part of that has to do with

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Speaker 1: as time goes by, younger people, people who are more

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Speaker 1: healthy who have the virus. Unfortunately, as time goes by,

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Speaker 1: the weeks go on, they can tip over to a

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Speaker 1: point where they are also sick enough to also pass away.

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Speaker 1: And we've seen that start to happen in Germany in

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Speaker 1: the last week or so, the first deaths of really

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Speaker 1: young people as well. Um, although one should say the

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Speaker 1: vast majority, um more than of deaths in Germany are

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Speaker 1: still people ages seventy and over. And and the other

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Speaker 1: thing that we're seeing happen in Germany now in the

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Speaker 1: past week is that the death rate is creeping up.

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Speaker 1: And part of that is that the virus has now

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Speaker 1: popped up in some senior living facilities, in some nursing homes,

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Speaker 1: and they are seeing a high mortality of people who

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Speaker 1: have gotten the virus in those facilities. So it sounds like,

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Speaker 1: you know, we we may have once looked to Germany

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Speaker 1: to say, what can we emulate around the world to

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Speaker 1: maybe avoid the hardest elements of this crisis, But it

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Speaker 1: may just simply be they were maybe a little delayed

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Speaker 1: and maybe facing the same issues as as everyone else.

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Speaker 1: I think we'll really see in the next week or two,

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Speaker 1: whether it was purely an issue of delay or whether

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Speaker 1: there is a deeper thing that we can learn um

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Speaker 1: And so often you learn what you can learn after

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Speaker 1: it's already too late to learn it right. But you know,

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Speaker 1: we'll see how high the death rate does creep and

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Speaker 1: whether it was just an issue of delay or whether

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Speaker 1: they were able to sidesteps some of these really high

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Speaker 1: death rates that we've seen. That's it for the Prognosis

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Speaker 1: Daily Edition. For more on the coronavirus crisis from a

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Blueberg dot

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Speaker 1: com slash coronavirus. If you appreciate the podcast, please take

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Speaker 1: a moment to rate us and leave us a review

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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more listeners find

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Speaker 1: our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by

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Speaker 1: me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by Me Topher Foreheads,

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Speaker 1: Jordan Gaspoure and Magnus Henriksson. Additional reporting by Naomi Kresky.

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Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi

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Speaker 1: and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,