Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day twenty four
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today, Germany has
Speaker 1: been seen as having a model government response to the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Some have compared it to countries like Italy, where the
Speaker 1: virus spread like wildfire after governments took too long to act,
Speaker 1: but that comparison may be unfair and Germany's fate may
Speaker 1: be about to change. But first, here's what happened today.
Speaker 1: How Speaker Nancy Pelosi scaled back her ambitions for Congress's
Speaker 1: next coronavirus stimulus package. She wants to focus on making
Speaker 1: more direct payments to individual and expanding loans to businesses.
Speaker 1: On CNN today, she said she still cared about infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but would possibly leave that and other democratic priorities for
Speaker 1: a later bill. Pelosi said the three and fifty billion
Speaker 1: dollars in the last stimulus meant to keep small business
Speaker 1: afloat for two months won't be enough. She also said
Speaker 1: people would need an extension of the expanded unemployment benefits
Speaker 1: after data showed an unprecedented wave of new unemployment claims
Speaker 1: in the last two weeks. So I'd like to go
Speaker 1: right back and say, let's look at that bill, let's
Speaker 1: update it for what with some other things that we need,
Speaker 1: and again put money in the pockets of the American people,
Speaker 1: another direct payment extending we had unemployment at six months
Speaker 1: in our bill, it's four. Let's take it to six
Speaker 1: for the unemployment so that people have that confidence. US
Speaker 1: employment plunged last month, offering a first look at the
Speaker 1: devastation the coronavirus pandemic has already been on trek on
Speaker 1: the once strong labor market. Pay Rolls fell seven and
Speaker 1: one thousand from the prior month, according to the Labor Department.
Speaker 1: That data mainly covers the early part of March, before
Speaker 1: widespread shutdowns forced firms to lay off millions more workers.
Speaker 1: The jobless rate jumped to four point four, the highest since.
Speaker 1: Economists say it will surge above ten in the coming months.
Speaker 1: The US is expected to suggest Americans consider wearing face
Speaker 1: coverings in public. That's a shift from what health officials
Speaker 1: had previously recommended. Along with some other countries, US authorities
Speaker 1: had discouraged anyone outside of hospitals from wearing masks, but
Speaker 1: more and more officials are reconsidering that guidance. Doctor Anthony Faucci,
Speaker 1: the top infectious disease expert in the US, said on
Speaker 1: Fox News Friday that asks can help when people are
Speaker 1: unable to keep six feet of distance from each other
Speaker 1: with certain necessities of life, going out to get food,
Speaker 1: while going to a pharmacy to get your medications, that
Speaker 1: you may inadvertently come into closer contact. Because of that,
Speaker 1: and because of some recent information that the virus can
Speaker 1: actually be spread even when people just speak, as opposed
Speaker 1: to coughing and sneezing, the better part of valor is
Speaker 1: that when you're out and you can't maintain that six
Speaker 1: foot distance, to wear some sort of facial covering. In Europe,
Speaker 1: Spain reported the first decline in new coronavirus fatalities in
Speaker 1: four days, while the UK had its deadliest day yet.
Speaker 1: Germany's Angela Merkel ended her self quarantine, while UK Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Boris Johnson still has symptoms and will continue to
Speaker 1: self isolate. The city state of Singapore will shutter schools
Speaker 1: and most workplaces, shifting away from an approach that limited
Speaker 1: interruptions to daily life and commerce. That's after confirmed cases
Speaker 1: of local transmission and unlinked infections in the country rose
Speaker 1: in recent weeks. Now to today's main story, Italy has
Speaker 1: been among the hardest hit countries by the pandemic, an
Speaker 1: outbreak epicenter. Italy's cases are at nearly one twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: with over fourteen thousand deaths as of Friday, April three.
Speaker 1: In recent weeks, Italy's mortality rate from coronavirus had reached
Speaker 1: as high as nine point five it sobering evidence of
Speaker 1: how deadly the virus can be. And yet just to
Speaker 1: the north, Germany seemed like it was escaping the worst
Speaker 1: of the outbreak by enacting widespread testing and taking the
Speaker 1: virus serious lee Earlier, with few cases and until recently
Speaker 1: a mortality rate that hovered under one percent, Germany appeared
Speaker 1: to be a model of how to successfully navigate the crisis.
Speaker 1: Of course, the US now has more than double Italy's cases,
Speaker 1: and experts predict the country will see hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of deaths before the pandemic subsides. Many have wondered whether
Speaker 1: the US could have escaped in Italy like fate if
Speaker 1: it followed measures similar to Germany, But now there's some
Speaker 1: doubt about whether Germany is really a COVID nineteen success
Speaker 1: story compared to Italy's cautionary tale. Over the last week,
Speaker 1: Germany's mortality rate from the virus has crept higher, a
Speaker 1: troubling indicator that the country may not have evaded serious
Speaker 1: trouble yet. To understand how the virus is affecting different
Speaker 1: European countries, I recently spoke with Bloomberg's Naomi Kreski from
Speaker 1: my makeshift home studio in Toronto. Naomi is in Germany,
Speaker 1: where you can hear the sounds of family life in
Speaker 1: the background, from under a blanket in Canada to under
Speaker 1: a blanket in Germany. Naomi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: What I really wanted to dig in here is about
Speaker 1: these what looked like very startling differences among countries in
Speaker 1: terms of cases and of course death rates in Europe.
Speaker 1: I think the major examples have been Italy versus Germany.
Speaker 1: Why do you think the death rates in Germany and
Speaker 1: Italy are are so different? To some extent In Germany,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is the effect of broad, broad
Speaker 1: testing that the German government has done. They are now
Speaker 1: testing some fifty thousand people a day for coronavirus. They're
Speaker 1: they're going out and they're testing people who are not
Speaker 1: that sick, people who are not showing up at the
Speaker 1: hospital because they're very ill. Um they're following sort of
Speaker 1: chains of disease and by finding the people who have
Speaker 1: been in contact with people who were sick with coronavirus
Speaker 1: and testing them if they show any symptoms at all.
Speaker 1: And so partly as a result of that, you have
Speaker 1: an age curve in Germany that just looks totally different
Speaker 1: than the age curve of people who have the virus
Speaker 1: in Italy or also in Spain, which is another place
Speaker 1: in Europe that has had a tremendous number of people
Speaker 1: die from coronavirus. You raised two really important points there,
Speaker 1: and that it is a testing question and there is
Speaker 1: at least a demographic and age demographic to consider there.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering, is this explained at all by how
Speaker 1: generations lived together actually in Germany versus Italy. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a super interesting question. So they're actually some academics who
Speaker 1: have already started looking at at this and trying to
Speaker 1: find some correlations, and they're just correlations at this point.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, but what we can say
Speaker 1: is that more than of Italians between the ages of
Speaker 1: thirty and forty nine, so sort of prime time to
Speaker 1: be traveling, picking up the virus from somewhere out, you know,
Speaker 1: meeting people UM getting germs. More than of these people
Speaker 1: live with their parents, and that is more than double
Speaker 1: the rate for Germans in that same age bracket. So
Speaker 1: a pair of economists from Bond University actually looked at
Speaker 1: this and found a correlation between generations living under one
Speaker 1: roof and case fatality for coronavirus. What what are if
Speaker 1: any lessons we can take from the Germany and Italy examples, Well,
Speaker 1: sort of a twofold lesson UM. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: Um the the economists who are looking at this, and
Speaker 1: they suggested that in countries where this kind of multi
Speaker 1: generational living is common, so in Europe that would be
Speaker 1: places like Greece or bulk Area, Poland Serbia, places where
Speaker 1: families often share a house or share an apartment, that
Speaker 1: these countries should move swiftly to protect the elderly. Some
Speaker 1: countries have spoken about school closures as one way to
Speaker 1: do this. If you can prevent um children from passing
Speaker 1: it among themselves and then taking it home and passing
Speaker 1: it to their to to their older relatives. The second
Speaker 1: thing to to maybe look at in this context is
Speaker 1: um for countries where elderly people are not living together
Speaker 1: with their families. UM. But this is one reason why
Speaker 1: nursing homes, for example in in the US have closed
Speaker 1: down their visiting hours, have said that families can't come
Speaker 1: and visit older frail p bowl and are you know,
Speaker 1: taking people's temperature at the door when they come in
Speaker 1: and testing workers on a day to day basis just
Speaker 1: this effort to try to prevent the virus from sort
Speaker 1: of being unleashed among this really frail population. Early on
Speaker 1: it looked like Germany was really going to escape this thing,
Speaker 1: and and Italy was almost immediately hit hard and became
Speaker 1: one of these epicenters of the global outbreak. How has
Speaker 1: that perception perhaps changed in the last week, UM, Is
Speaker 1: it's still that we're looking to Germany to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: there are a model that we can imitate in some
Speaker 1: way to hopefully tamp down the curve, and what can
Speaker 1: we avoid doing using Italy as perhaps a warning example?
Speaker 1: Is that still the case? From the beginning, public health
Speaker 1: authorities in Germany warned that the death rate here would
Speaker 1: also rise, and part of that has to do with
Speaker 1: as time goes by, younger people, people who are more
Speaker 1: healthy who have the virus. Unfortunately, as time goes by,
Speaker 1: the weeks go on, they can tip over to a
Speaker 1: point where they are also sick enough to also pass away.
Speaker 1: And we've seen that start to happen in Germany in
Speaker 1: the last week or so, the first deaths of really
Speaker 1: young people as well. Um, although one should say the
Speaker 1: vast majority, um more than of deaths in Germany are
Speaker 1: still people ages seventy and over. And and the other
Speaker 1: thing that we're seeing happen in Germany now in the
Speaker 1: past week is that the death rate is creeping up.
Speaker 1: And part of that is that the virus has now
Speaker 1: popped up in some senior living facilities, in some nursing homes,
Speaker 1: and they are seeing a high mortality of people who
Speaker 1: have gotten the virus in those facilities. So it sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, we we may have once looked to Germany
Speaker 1: to say, what can we emulate around the world to
Speaker 1: maybe avoid the hardest elements of this crisis, But it
Speaker 1: may just simply be they were maybe a little delayed
Speaker 1: and maybe facing the same issues as as everyone else.
Speaker 1: I think we'll really see in the next week or two,
Speaker 1: whether it was purely an issue of delay or whether
Speaker 1: there is a deeper thing that we can learn um
Speaker 1: And so often you learn what you can learn after
Speaker 1: it's already too late to learn it right. But you know,
Speaker 1: we'll see how high the death rate does creep and
Speaker 1: whether it was just an issue of delay or whether
Speaker 1: they were able to sidesteps some of these really high
Speaker 1: death rates that we've seen. That's it for the Prognosis
Speaker 1: Daily Edition. For more on the coronavirus crisis from a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Blueberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash coronavirus. If you appreciate the podcast, please take
Speaker 1: a moment to rate us and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more listeners find
Speaker 1: our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by
Speaker 1: me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by Me Topher Foreheads,
Speaker 1: Jordan Gaspoure and Magnus Henriksson. Additional reporting by Naomi Kresky.
Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi
Speaker 1: and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,