Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day forty three
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story,
Speaker 1: the US is still trying to figure out what normal
Speaker 1: life looks like after a pandemic. For a clue, we
Speaker 1: can look to Wuhan, China, the early center of the outbreak,
Speaker 1: where tight restrictions on movement were lifted only weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Beijing bureau chief, Sharon Chen, visited Wuhan as the
Speaker 1: lockdown ended. She reports the city's residents are living in
Speaker 1: a world that's far from normal. But first, here's what
Speaker 1: happened today. It was the fifth week that new unemployment
Speaker 1: claims reached astronomical levels. It brings the five week total
Speaker 1: during the pandemic to twenty six point five million. That's
Speaker 1: the steepest labor market downturn since the Great Depression. The
Speaker 1: numbers suggest that the US jobless rate for April will
Speaker 1: potentially reach that's double the ten peak reached in the
Speaker 1: wake of the two thousand nine financial crisis. Any minute now,
Speaker 1: the U s House of Representatives is expected to pass
Speaker 1: the four hundred and eighty four billion dollar interim coronavirus
Speaker 1: Rescue package. They met for debate leading up to the vote,
Speaker 1: while taking extraordinary health precautions. Most members were masks and
Speaker 1: members took turns in the chamber to debate the bill.
Speaker 1: It was the first time they convened as a group
Speaker 1: since March. The measure will add new funds to the
Speaker 1: paycheck Protection program of loans to small businesses. The President
Speaker 1: of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, told EU leaders
Speaker 1: that its gross domestic product could follow by as much
Speaker 1: as fifteent. Lagarde set in a video conference with the
Speaker 1: twenty seven EU heads that they have done too little,
Speaker 1: too late, according to people familiar with her remarks. Finally,
Speaker 1: a new antibody test can tell in fourteen minutes whether
Speaker 1: someone was infected with a novel coronavirus. According to Siemens
Speaker 1: Health and Years a G, the company that developed the test,
Speaker 1: it is more than accurate and will be available by
Speaker 1: late May. And now our main story. Millions of people
Speaker 1: in Wuhan, China, the city where the novel coronavirus first emerged,
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out what life looks like in
Speaker 1: the bustling industrial city after the worst pandemic in a century.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Beijing Bureau chief Sharon Chen went to Wuhan recently
Speaker 1: to see what it looks like to emerge from lockdown.
Speaker 1: She found a world that still feels far from normal
Speaker 1: and a population that's keenly aware of both the threat
Speaker 1: of disease and the watchful eye of China's powerful surveillance state.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Senior Executive editor for Economics, Stephanie Flanders, spoke to
Speaker 1: Sharon for the Stephanomics podcast. Here's some of their conversation.
Speaker 1: We went to Wuhan on April four, just before the
Speaker 1: quarantine was lifted on April eight. The idea was to
Speaker 1: go there and see, you know, how does the city
Speaker 1: of more than ten million people emerged from lockdown and
Speaker 1: it's the first city in the world that went through it.
Speaker 1: And throughout this whole process, this virus outbreak, Wuhan has
Speaker 1: kind of been ahead of the curve. Did have been
Speaker 1: the first city to deal with it, and then now
Speaker 1: the first city to be lockdown and then for a
Speaker 1: city to try to get back to normal. Every thought
Speaker 1: that going there would maybe give us some clues about
Speaker 1: what kinds of things would happen when other big cities
Speaker 1: try to emerge from lockdown. Yeah, so that was the
Speaker 1: idea behind the trip. And now that I'm back in Beijing,
Speaker 1: I've been quarantined in my apartment for fourteen days and
Speaker 1: I can't leave. You were actually and you were just saying,
Speaker 1: I want to hear Himut what what Wihan? But you
Speaker 1: should you have an alarm on your door. But to
Speaker 1: prevent you from from leaving, they put an alarm on
Speaker 1: my door that alerts my kind of my property management
Speaker 1: building a building management whenever I opened the door, and
Speaker 1: I'm only allowed to open the door to put the
Speaker 1: trash outside and to pick up food that's delivered or
Speaker 1: any items I have delivered. I have to report my
Speaker 1: temperature to three different recheck groups every day, twice a day.
Speaker 1: Beijing is just on high alert. It's kind of more
Speaker 1: paranoid than any other city in China. On Whan, what
Speaker 1: what struck you most immediately about the experience there, because,
Speaker 1: as you say, we do look to Wuhan as an
Speaker 1: extreme example of the impact of the virus, but also
Speaker 1: a place that was quite far ahead of everywhere else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my biggest takeaway is that it
Speaker 1: was really kind of a two speed recovery or like
Speaker 1: coming back to normal. So you had the resumption of
Speaker 1: work and that was really apparent and really immediate, especially
Speaker 1: because it was something that the government was pushing. So
Speaker 1: the day we arrived there were there was hardly any traffic,
Speaker 1: and by the time we were leaving ten days later,
Speaker 1: we were getting stuck in traffic constantly at rush hour
Speaker 1: because people were going to work. You know, factories were
Speaker 1: working at full production capacity. They were working through the weekends,
Speaker 1: they worked through the long holiday that we were there
Speaker 1: to make up for all the last time. But in
Speaker 1: terms of consumption, you know, the shopping malls were open,
Speaker 1: the restaurants were open, but they were basically empty. No
Speaker 1: one was eating out. Even the few people that we
Speaker 1: to in the mall said that they don't think that
Speaker 1: they would go out like they used to before just
Speaker 1: for fun um, you know, they would really only go
Speaker 1: out for essential activities. People will still scared, I think,
Speaker 1: both of the virus, even though there are officially no
Speaker 1: cases in Mohan. Now, um they're they're both scared of
Speaker 1: the virus. It's kind of I think a psychological hangover
Speaker 1: after being told for weeks and weeks that it's very
Speaker 1: dangerous outside and you can't go outside and it's dangerous
Speaker 1: interact with people. But they were also scared of being
Speaker 1: quarantined again because in Mohan they have this health code system,
Speaker 1: so you're either green, yellow, or red, and even going
Speaker 1: into a shopping mall where later someone else is either
Speaker 1: suspected or confirmed of having the virus will turn your
Speaker 1: code yellow and then you can get quarantined again, and
Speaker 1: your housing compound can refuse to let you leave the
Speaker 1: housing compound. So there's kind of like this high level
Speaker 1: of paranoia about both those things, both the virus and
Speaker 1: about being locked up again. So I mean, I think
Speaker 1: consumer habits and just social habits really have changed, and
Speaker 1: there was kind of this divergence between going to work
Speaker 1: and going out for fun. Now that's fascinating, and I
Speaker 1: think and we are seeing that when we're looking at
Speaker 1: the sort of high frequency economist are now looking at
Speaker 1: the high frequency data in Beijing and other cities, and
Speaker 1: you can see this real there's a sort of bat
Speaker 1: as you say, there's the kind of supply side and
Speaker 1: the demand side. The supply side shock as we used
Speaker 1: to talk about it has gone because people are more
Speaker 1: or less back to work, But anything that's to do
Speaker 1: with spending and consumer activity, particularly at the weekends, is
Speaker 1: just still way below where it was. And that's obviously
Speaker 1: concerning for economists thinking about how steep the recovery is.
Speaker 1: When you look at Wuhan and then you read people
Speaker 1: still talking about that v shaped recovery that we turn
Speaker 1: everything back on again, do you think that is is
Speaker 1: quite far off the map. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: if you listen to you know, like US President Donald
Speaker 1: Trump saying when we lift the lockdowns, everything's going to
Speaker 1: go back to normal, it just seems so far removed
Speaker 1: from what's happening in Buhan. You know, just because people
Speaker 1: have the freedom to go outside doesn't mean that they
Speaker 1: want to the idea of people sitting in a crowded
Speaker 1: restaurant or going to watch a movie in a theater
Speaker 1: or going to a concert. I mean, like, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone in Mohan would even consider that within the
Speaker 1: realm of possibility. Being at home for so long, I
Speaker 1: think it's really changed people in the long term, Like
Speaker 1: people are just more used to um eating at home,
Speaker 1: used to cooking at home, not really going out getting
Speaker 1: food delivered. We also interviewed a restaurant owner. He of
Speaker 1: his ten restaurants, none of them have reopened. The original
Speaker 1: plan was for him to reopen three, and then when
Speaker 1: he realized that nobody's going out anyway, he decided he
Speaker 1: was just going to real and one, and eventually he
Speaker 1: reopened none of them. And he said, you know, people now,
Speaker 1: they don't go out for lunch on their lunch hour.
Speaker 1: Everyone's bringing lunch to the office, that bringing home cooked food.
Speaker 1: So all these little things that are really going to
Speaker 1: impact businesses like his, especially small businesses, I think, and
Speaker 1: I think it goes to that point of the permanence
Speaker 1: of some of these costs. We know, as you said,
Speaker 1: the manufacturers are quickly doing the orders that got put
Speaker 1: on hold, and you could imagine that they might get
Speaker 1: back eighty or ninety percent of what they would have had.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll grow much faster now in a classic
Speaker 1: kind of recovery where and catch up that lost ground.
Speaker 1: But in the service sector and spending on things like restaurants,
Speaker 1: we just we know that we're not going to be
Speaker 1: eating twice as many restaurant meals in the second half
Speaker 1: of the year. But what you're telling me is that
Speaker 1: we may not even be eating half the level of
Speaker 1: our normal level. That could really have an impact on
Speaker 1: the pace of the recovery. Well, Sharon, so how long
Speaker 1: have you got before that bell goes off your our door?
Speaker 1: When do you when do you get to see the sun?
Speaker 1: She field the sunshine again. So I have seven days
Speaker 1: to go, but Beijing has just said that my district
Speaker 1: is a high risk area because they discovered a cluster.
Speaker 1: A student from the US came back and tested positive
Speaker 1: for the virus two days after he completed his fourteen
Speaker 1: day quarantine. So there's been some rumors that they could
Speaker 1: extend it to twenty one days, but so far that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. So fingers crossed that I get out in
Speaker 1: a week. Good luck, fingers crossed, And thanks so much
Speaker 1: for all the reporting you're doing. Thank you. That was
Speaker 1: Stephanie Flanders in conversation with Sharon Chen. For more on
Speaker 1: what it will take for China and the world to
Speaker 1: return to normal, listen to the new episode of Stephanomics
Speaker 1: out today, and that's it for our show. For more
Speaker 1: on the coronavirus crisis from a hundred and twenty bureaus
Speaker 1: around the world, visit Bloomberg Dot com slash Coronavirus and please,
Speaker 1: if you appreciate the show, please leave us a review
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Speaker 1: best way to help more listeners find our global reporting.
Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson.
Speaker 1: The show was produced by Me Tophor foreheads Jordan Gospoure
Speaker 1: and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story was reported by Sharon
Speaker 1: chet Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca
Speaker 1: Levi and Rick Shine. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.