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Fauci warns states rushing to reopen: ‘You’re making a really significant risk’
Fauci, who has repeatedly cautioned against prematurely easing restrictions, said he already noticed that some states and cities are not adhering to the steps laid out in the White House’s recently issued guidance on reopening — a plan that administration officials say will now replace the expired federal social distancing measures.
“If you follow the guidelines, there’s a continuity that’s safe, that’s prudent and that’s careful,” he said.
But if governors rush to reopen when they aren’t ready, Fauci cautioned that the move would likely only set back the progress their states have made.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that when you pull back mitigation, you’re going to start seeing cases crop up here and there,” he said. “If you’re not able to handle them, you’re going to see another peak, a spike, and then you almost have to turn the clock back to go back to mitigation.”
Fauci’s comments come as dozens of states have unveiled plans to begin easing stay-at-home orders, with some changes already taking effect despite the number of coronavirus cases and related deaths continuing to rise nationwide. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), for example, weathered intense criticism, including from President Trump, after announcing that he would lift restrictions on a wide array of businesses, allowing them to open a week ago.
The patchwork effort to return to some semblance of normalcy coupled with the absence of stringent social distancing recommendations has left health experts worried, The Washington Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb and Rachel Weiner reported. Attempts to reopen states too soon at a time when social distancing remains the most effective way to stem the spread of the virus could increase the risk of new outbreaks, experts say. According to most recent figures, the United States has more than 1 million cases of the coronavirus and nearly 63,000 deaths.
On Thursday, Fauci appeared to echo those concerns, but stressed that major problems could be avoided so long as states adhere to the federal government’s reopening guidelines, which he described as “very well thought out and very well delineated.”
“I keep trying to articulate to the public and to the leaders, ‘Take a look at the guidelines,’ ” Fauci said on CNN. “They don’t tell you because you’ve reached the end of the 30-day mitigation period that, all of a sudden, you switch a light on and you just go for it. That’s not the way to do it. Each state, each city, each region is going to be a little different.”
Citing the guidelines, Fauci reiterated that states need to report a steady decrease in coronavirus cases within a 14-day period in addition to meeting other requirements before even thinking about moving on to the first phase of reopening.
“The discretion is given to the governors, they know their states. The mayors know their cities, so you want to give them a little wiggle room,” he said. “But my recommendation is don’t wiggle too much.”
While Fauci acknowledged that some local leaders are following the guidance, he said “others are taking a bit of a chance.”
“I hope they can actually handle any rebound that they see,” he added.
Later in the segment, Fauci was asked by CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta about whether the rise in cases in states that are reopening would be incremental or exponential. In response, Fauci said that though he doesn’t know for sure, he doubted that any area would see “something as explosive as we saw in New York.” New York, which has yet to lift restrictions, is the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak with more than 300,000 confirmed cases and roughly 23,600 deaths.
But he warned that states could really find themselves in trouble if infections managed to “spill over into the general community,” similar to the way the virus spread in New York.
“If you can’t stop that from happening, then I think you’re really going to see the sharp peak,” Fauci said. “That is going to be very disturbing when that happens because it’s really going to take a while to get it back down.”
Romney calls for hazard pay for workers on the front line of the pandemic
“This is a proposal which I think is fiscally responsible but also recognizes the additional risk that people are taking,” Romney said in a phone interview with The Washington Post on Friday.
He noted that an essential worker who earns less than $22 per hour may ultimately be paid less than someone earning unemployment benefits that were bolstered by Congress in recent virus rescue packages.
“That’s not fair, number one,” Romney said. “And number two, it would create an anomaly, of course, for people to be taking additional risk of their health and have someone else not working making more than they are.”
The idea of hazard pay — additional compensation for those on the front lines of the pandemic — has broad conceptual support in Washington, yet neither lawmakers nor the Trump administration addressed the issue in the economic and health relief bill, totaling nearly $3 trillion, passed thus far.
President Trump has spoken in general terms about providing additional pay to critical medical personnel, and the White House has indicated that the administration is working with Congress on doing so. Senate Democrats have released a plan, dubbed the “Heroes Fund,” that provides up to $25,000 per person for a broad category of essential personnel including not just health-care employees but also food workers and delivery drivers.
Romney’s proposal covers a similarly broad swath of workers. The Labor Department and Congress would determine what industries would be deemed “essential,” but they would include at a minimum hospitals, food distributors and manufacturers. Employers would have to prove that workers would be in conditions that increased their exposure to the coronavirus to qualify for the bonus.
Three-quarters of that additional money would be paid for by the federal government in the form of a refundable payroll tax credit, and the rest would be picked up by their employer. That pay boost would last from May 1 through July 31 under Romney’s plan.
Someone earning $50,000 or less per year would receive an additional $12 per hour, with the hourly increase gradually phased out as salaries increase. The maximum qualifying salary would be $90,000.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor with a lengthy business background, has spoken to other GOP senators and said that while opinions may differ, the concept of hazard pay could be gaining traction among Republicans.
“It strikes me that we’re open to considering a wide array of opportunities to help people that are serving the public,” Romney said. “And a number of individuals have expressed an openness to considering different ideas.”
Employers split from health care industry
Several large employer groups this week refused to sign on to funding requests they consider a “handout” for hospitals and insurers, according to three people close to the process.
The big picture: Coronavirus spending bills are sharpening tensions between the employers that fund a significant portion of the country’s health care system and the hospitals, doctors and insurers that operate it, Bob reports.
Driving the news: The industry’s most recent request — written primarily by the large hospital and health insurance lobbying groups — focused on a few items for the next coronavirus legislation:
- Providing subsidies to maintain employer-sponsored insurance, which already receives a large tax break, as well as providing subsidies for COBRA for people who have lost their jobs.
- Increasing subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans and creating a special ACA enrollment window.
- Opposing the use of the industry’s bailout funds to pay for uninsured COVID-19 patients at Medicare rates.
Between the lines: Employers know they get charged a lot more for health care services compared with public insurers, but many weren’t keen about urging Congress to “set up a government program to pay commercial reimbursements,” said an executive at a trade group that represents large corporations.
The other side: Several health care groups that signed the letter dismissed the idea of any disagreement with employers.
Crisis begins to hit professional and public-sector jobs once considered safe
As the novel coronavirus pandemic brought business to a halt, the pain rippled outward, blowing up sector after sector. According to a detailed analysis of unemployment claims, no industry was left untouched.
After that first chaotic week of lockdowns mid-March, as officials scrambled to slow the spread of the deadliest pandemic in more than a century, restaurants and theaters saw job losses slow while losses in other sectors, such as construction and supply-chain work, accelerated. Now, it appears the economic upheaval is hitting professional and public-sector jobs that some once regarded as safe.
The Labor Department doesn’t release jobless claims by industry. So, building on the work of economist Ben Zipperer and his colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute, we analyzed industry-specific new unemployment-benefit claims from 14 states that publish them. (For a full list, see the charts below.)
For that, we need to focus in on the weekly changes in jobless claims to distinguish between industries where claims are falling and those where claims are steady or increasing. The data can also help us estimate how the labor market will change in coming months.
Week 1, March 15 to 21: Full-contact industries
(Highest week-to-week change included: accommodation and food services; arts entertainment and recreation; hairdressers, auto mechanics and laundry workers)
The first week of closures slammed headfirst into industries that require the most face-to-face customer contact — America’s hospitality sector. More than 7 percent of all restaurant, hotel and bar workers filed for unemployment in this first week alone.
For public officials looking to enforce social distancing, bars, hotels and movie theaters were obvious targets: They’re discretionary spending and require significant human interaction. Another category, which the government calls “other services” but is primarily made up of hairdressers, auto mechanics and laundry workers, also suffered swift and significant losses.
The number of newly unemployed filers in all these high-contact industries fell off in subsequent weeks, but they remain the biggest casualties of the crisis. And unemployment claims probably understate the pain of lower-earning Americans. Low-wage workers often don’t qualify for benefits because they haven’t spent enough time on the job, or aren’t being paid enough, Zipperer said.
A survey released Tuesday by Zipperer and his colleague Elise Gould implies unemployment numbers may be significantly worse than government statistics show. For every 10 people who successfully applied for unemployment benefits during the crisis, they show, another three or four couldn’t get through the overloaded system, and two more didn’t even apply because the system is too difficult.
Week 2, March 22 to 28: The producers
(Highest week-to-week change included: manufacturing; construction; retail)
By the second week, the shutdown moved from businesses where the primary danger is interacting with customers to those, like construction and manufacturing, that require in-person interaction with large crews of colleagues.
On March 26, for example, Spokane, Wash.-area custom-cabinet maker Huntwood Industries, laid off around 500 employees, according to Thomas Clouse of the Spokesman-Review. As a manufacturer whose sales depend on the construction industry, it was hit doubly hard by the shutdowns.
“It is a scary time,” Amy Ohms, 37, told Clouse. “It’s kind of unfair. I think construction is essential. There is a lot of uncertainty.”
Manufacturers were among the first publicly traded companies to note travel and supply-chain risks related to the coronavirus outbreak in China in financial filings, according to a separate analysis by Oxford researchers Fabian Stephany and Fabian Braesemann and collaborators in Berlin. By March, manufacturers were noting domestic production issues.
Their analysis also shows that, in the middle of March, concern about the coronavirus and its disease, covid-19, from retail corporations eclipsed that of manufacturers. Indeed, retail struggled mightily in the second week of the crisis. More workers were told to stay home, and folks realized foot traffic was often incompatible with social distancing.
The retail sector wasn’t hit as quickly or as forcefully as food services or entertainment, presumably because the sector includes grocery stores and others who employ workers who were deemed essential.
Week 3, March 29 to April 4: The supply chain
(Highest week-to-week change included: wholesale trade; retail trade; administrative and waste management)
In the third week, the pain worked its way up the supply chain, as wholesale trade — a sector that includes some sales representatives, truck drivers and freight laborers — got slammed.
In theory, the lockdowns created near-perfect trucking conditions: traffic vanished, diesel keeps getting cheaper and the roads are safer than they have been in decades. Only one problem: There’s not much to haul right now.
Don Hayden, president of Louisville trucking firm M&M Cartage, feared he would have to lay off about 70 percent of his 400 employees — drivers, mechanics and office staff — in early April. Orders from his customers in heavy manufacturing evaporated.
But, just in time, he got a Payroll Protection Program loan through his local bank. He was shocked at how rapidly his loan was approved and the money arrived, and he said the Treasury Department had done an outstanding job.
“We’re good through May and into June,” he said. “We have a good workforce. We’re proud of them. We sure would like to retain them.”
At this point in the crisis, the focus shifted from huge, industry-eviscerating swings in jobless numbers to gradual weekly trends that help us guess where the jobless claims will settle in the weeks and months to come.
As industries fall like dominoes, policymakers need to realize the damage isn’t contained to a few specific sectors, said University of Tennessee economist Marianne Wanamaker, a former member of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
She said there may be a temptation to extend benefits for difficult-to-reopen industries such as food service and hospitality, but “it doesn’t comport with the data because the damage is so widespread. It’s not fair to say, ‘Hotel and restaurant workers, you get these really generous packages and everybody else has to go back to work.’ ”
Week 4, April 5 to 11: White-collar workers
(Highest week-to-week change included: management; finance and insurance; public administration)
White-collar industries have been shedding jobs since mid-March, albeit at a much lower rate than lower-income sectors. But as losses in low-income sectors subsided, white-collar jobless claims stayed flat or even intensified. By week four, categories that contain managers, bookkeepers, insurance agents and bank tellers saw some of the worst weekly trends of any sector.
On April 9, the online review site Yelp laid off 1,000 workers and furloughed 1,100 more (about a third of its workforce) as traffic on the site plunged while businesses were locked down.
“The physical distancing measures and shelter-in-place orders, while critical to flatten the curve, have dealt a devastating blow to the local businesses that are core to our mission,” CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote at the time.
Jane Oates, president of the employment-focused nonprofit organization WorkingNation, used to oversee the Labor Department wing that coordinates unemployment claims and training. “The big difference between coronavirus and the Great Recession is that this has completely stopped the economy across so many sectors,” she said.
During the Great Recession, she and her team had the luxury of flooding support into areas that were being hit hardest in a particular week or month. They went from state to state and industry to industry, putting out fires as they arose.
The Labor Department can’t address individual problems like that during the coronavirus recession, she said, because everybody’s getting shellacked simultaneously.
Week 5, April 12 to 18: The public sector
(Highest week-to-week change included: oil, gas and mining; utilities; public administration)
In the week ending April 18, the most recent for which we have data, we can no longer avoid one of the most ominous trends in the entire analysis: a rise in public-sector layoffs. Utilities, public administration and education services — all of which have close implicit or explicit ties to state and local government, were among the worst-faring sectors on a weekly basis.
To stem the tide of what could be millions of job losses and furloughs, the National League of Cities is pushing for a $250 billion bailout of cities throughout the country, colleague Tony Romm reports.
In Broomfield, Colo., a Denver-area suburb of about 70,000 residents, 235 city and county employees were furloughed on April 22, according to Jennifer Rios in the Broomfield Enterprise.
“The impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus is more significant than any of us could have ever expected for our well-being, as well as our municipal financial stability,” Rios reports that officials wrote in a letter to furloughed employees.“
State and local governments are typically required to balance their budgets. Now that they’re staring down the barrel of a huge tax-revenue shortfall, “these revenue losses are going to cause government budgets to fall and they’re going to lay people off,” Zipperer said.
“You’re seeing the beginnings of a big contraction in the public sector,” he said. “That’s going to be the next huge thing.”
The public sector used to be the bulwark that kept the economy going while the private sector pulled back during a recession, Zipperer said. “Over the last couple of recessions, the public sector hasn’t played that traditional role,” Zipperer said. “As a result, we’ve seen steeper recessions and slower recoveries.”
Jobless claims: Another 3.84 million Americans file for unemployment benefits
On the heels of worse-than-anticipated first-quarter GDP data, investors got additional economic data Thursday to reflect the ongoing damage being done to the U.S. economy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims figures Thursday morning, and another 3.839 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits during the week ending April 25. Economists were predicting 3.5 million claims for the week, and the prior week’s figure was revised higher to 4.44 million from 4.43 million. In just the previous six weeks, more than 30 million Americans have filed unemployment insurance claims.
Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims data by one week, totaled 17.99 million for the week ending April 18. The prior week’s record 15.98 million continuing claims was revised lower to 15.82 million.
“This is the fourth consecutive slowing in the pace of new jobless claims, but it is still horrible and underlines the severe economic consequences of the Covid-19 containment measures,” ING economist James Knightley wrote in a note Thursday.
“The re-opening of some states, including Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida, appear to have gone fairly slowly. Consumers remain reluctant to go shopping or visit a restaurant due to lingering COVID-19 fears, while the social distancing restrictions placed on the number of customers allowed in restaurants do not make it economically justifiable for some to open. Evidence so far suggests very little chance of a V-shaped recovery, meaning that unemployment is unlikely to come down anywhere near as quickly as it has been going up,” Knightley added.
Certain states got hit harder than others last week as massive backlogs continued to pile up, and states that implemented shelter-in-place orders later than others saw an increase in claims. For the week ending April 25, Florida saw the highest number of initial jobless claims at an estimated 432,000 on an unadjusted basis, from 507,000 in the prior week. California reported 328,000, down from 528,000 in the previous week. Georgia had an estimated 265,000 and Texas reported 254,000.
While consensus economists anticipate weekly jobless claims will be in the millions in the near term, a continued steady decline is largely expected going forward.
“We expect initial jobless claims to continue to decline on a weekly basis. Many workers affected by closures of nonessential businesses have likely already filed for benefits at this point,” Nomura economist Lewis Alexander wrote in a note April 27. “In addition, the strong demand for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, part of the CARES Act passed on 27 March, suggests some room for labor market stabilization.”
However, Barclays warned that some recent data indicated that the decline in weekly claims could actually be slower than previously estimated.
“NYC 311 calls in the week ending April 24 were running about 30% higher than a week earlier and support our change in forecast,” Barclays economist Blerina Uruci wrote in a note Wednesday. “In particular, we find it concerning that after declining steadily in recent weeks, the number of calls related to unemployment rose again during the week ending April 24.”
The firm increased its estimate for weekly jobless claims to 4 million from the previously estimated 3.25 million for the week ending April 25. Bank of America also boosted its estimate for claims to 4.1 million from the previously forecast 3.5 million claims.
“Scanning through the local news, we were able to locate information about ten states + DC. We found that claims declined only 2.5% week-to-week NSA [not seasonally adjusted],” Bank of America said in a note Wednesday.
COVID-19 cases recently topped 3.2 million worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University data. There were more than 1 million cases in the U.S. and 60,000 deaths, as of Thursday morning.
Cartoon – Economics 101
The U.S. plans to lend $500 billion to large companies. It won’t require them to preserve jobs or limit executive pay.
The Fed’s coronavirus aid program lacks restrictions Congress placed on companies seeking financial help under other programs.
Unlike other portions of the relief for American businesses, however, this aid will be exempt from rules passed by Congress requiring recipients to limit dividends, executive compensation and stock buybacks and does not direct the companies to maintain certain employment levels.
Critics say the program could allow large companies that take the federal help to reward shareholders and executives without saving any jobs. The program was set up jointly by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
“I am struck that the administration is relying on the good will of the companies receiving this assistance,” said Eswar Prasad, a former official at the International Monetary Fund and economist at Cornell University. “A few months down the road, after the government purchases its debt, the company can turn around and issue a bunch of dividends to shareholders or fire its workers, and there’s no clear path to get it back.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended the corporate aid program, saying that the lack of restrictions on recipients had been discussed and agreed to by Congress. “This was highly discussed on a bipartisan basis. This was thought through carefully,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “What we agreed upon was direct loans would carry the restrictions, and the capital markets transactions would not carry the restrictions.”
Democrats asked for restrictions on how companies can use the money from the central bank’s bond purchases but were rebuffed by the administration during negotiations about the Cares Act, said a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The spokesman said Democrats won meaningful concessions from the administration on reporting transparency in the final agreement. (Transparency requirements do not apply to the small-business loans, the biggest business aid program rolled out to date.)
Mnuchin also said the program had already bolstered investor confidence in U.S. capital markets, which in turn helped firms raise capital they used to avoid layoffs.
“The mere announcement of these facilities, quite frankly, led to a reopening of a lot of these capital markets,” Mnuchin said in an interview. “Even before these facilities are up and running, they’ve had their desired impact of having stability in the markets. Stability in the markets allows companies to function, and raise money and allows them to keep and retain workers and get back to work.”
The corporate debt purchases by the Fed stand in stark contrast with other portions of the federal aid for U.S. businesses that come with requirements to protect jobs or limit spending.
The Paycheck Protection Program, which offers $659 billion for small businesses, requires companies to certify that the money will be used to “retain workers and maintain payroll or make mortgage payments, lease payments, and utility payments.”
The “Main Street” program offering up to $600 billion to “midsize” businesses — with 500 to 10,000 employees — forbids companies from issuing dividends and places limits on executive compensation, according to a term sheet issued by the Fed. Those restrictions are in effect until 12 months after the loan is no longer outstanding. The companies must also “make reasonable efforts” to maintain payroll and retain employees.
Likewise, the $46 billion program for airlines, air cargo companies and national security forbids dividends and limits executive pay. Its requirement on retaining employment is more rigorous, however. Companies are supposed retain at least 90 percent of their employees.
The first version of the Fed program to buy bonds from large companies, known as the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, probably would have compelled recipients of the aid to limit executive pay and dividends. That version of the program, described in a March 23 term sheet issued by the Fed, offered direct loans and bond purchases to companies. Under the Cares Act, the federal programs offering direct loans must set restrictions on company dividends and CEO pay; those that buy only corporate bonds do not. Both are forms of lending, although bonds are more easily resold.
But on April 9, the Fed altered the design of the program to exclude direct corporate lending. The Fed program will still essentially lend money to large companies — by buying their bonds — but the Fed will not be compelled by the Cares Act to ensure that companies abide by the divided and CEO pay rules.
“The change to the term sheet between March and April is the smoking gun on the Fed’s own culpability here,” said Gregg Gelzinis, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “The basic principle of the Cares Act was that if we’re going to provide taxpayer funding to private industry, we need conditions to make sure it is in the public interest. This violates that principle.”
Bharat Ramamurti, an aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who was appointed to the board overseeing the bailout, said in a statement: “Big corporations have shown time and again that they will put their shareholders and executives ahead of their workers if given the choice. That’s why I’m so concerned that the Treasury and the Fed have chosen to direct hundreds of billions of dollars to big companies with no strings attached.”
A spokesman for the Federal Reserve declined to comment. The Fed’s board of governors unanimously approved the new bond purchasing program on March 22. The Fed has said it will purchase only the bonds of firms above a certain grade. The issuer of the bond also must meet the conflicts-of-interest requirements in the Cares Act, which preclude federal lawmakers or their relatives from benefiting financially from the government bailout.
In the interview, Mnuchin also said many companies are ceasing stock buybacks and are likely to use the additional capital to retain workers.
“A lot of companies have stopped their share buybacks and slashed their dividends, because they need that capital to invest in their business. Even though these restrictions don’t necessarily apply, that’s already happening,” he said.
Some experts disputed that assertion. “Some companies have ceased buybacks and dividends and some haven’t. We shouldn’t have to keep our fingers crossed,” Gelzinis said.
It is unknown what the terms will be for the Fed lending under the program, or how favorable they will be for recipients. The term sheet says only that they will depend on the company and be “informed” by market conditions.
Companies selling their bonds to the central bank are expected to be primarily investment grade, publicly traded firms and therefore subject to more disclosure and oversight than those that are privately held. Patricia C. Mosser, a former senior official at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said these corporations are scrutinized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, private investors and the credit rating agencies.
“It’s true that there’s nothing stopping these companies from continuing to pay stock dividends. You may not like that, and I have sympathy for that position,” said Mosser, now a professor at Columbia University. “But it’s easier to unmask bad behavior in public companies. Large companies certainly don’t do everything right, but they have to admit publicly how they pay top executives, where their profits go and how they use them. That history of disclosure and oversight means the risk of not being repaid is lower.”
The weaker restrictions on recipients of the Fed’s lending program may be partly justified, said Nathan Tankus, research director at the Modern Money Network, which studies monetary policy. The corporate bonds that the Fed is purchasing from companies can be resold, whereas direct loans establish an agreement between the company and the government that makes the asset less valuable to the central bank, he said.
“Purchases of debt are a slightly more arm’s-length transaction than the loan, which is forming a bilateral relationship,” Tankus said. “But this is really just the fig leaf the Fed can use to justify lifting the restrictions.”
Iowa tells workers to return to their jobs or lose unemployment benefits, despite warnings that reopening could lead to a 2nd wave of infections
- Iowa is preparing to partially reopen 77 counties on Friday.
- The state said furloughed employees who refuse to return to work that they would lose their unemployment benefits — and Gov. Kim Reynolds said it could disqualify them from future unemployment benefits.
- However, a group of experts advised the governor last week not to loosen restrictions and said the state has not reached its peak of infections and deaths.
As Iowa prepares to partially reopen on Friday, the state has told furloughed workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to work.
The Des Moines Register reported that businesses like restaurants, bars, retail stores, and fitness centers would be allowed to reopen at half capacity starting on May 1. Gov. Kim Reynolds said the 77 reopening counties either have no cases or are on a downward trend.
Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency that provides employment services for individual workers, said an employee’s refusal return to work out of fear would be considered a “voluntary quit” — which would mean they could no longer receive unemployment benefits. The announcement applies to workers across the state.
Ryan West, the deputy director of Iowa Workforce Development, told Radio Iowa that there were some exceptions, such as workers diagnosed with COVID-19.
The Iowa Workforce Development website prompts employers to fill out what it calls a Job Offer Decline Form for employees who refuse to return to work. The governor has said that opting not to go back to work could disqualify employees from future unemployment benefits.
Business Insider’s Andy Kiersz reported that 232,913 Iowans filed for unemployment between March 15 and April 18, which is 13.5% of the state’s labor force.
Last week, seven epidemiology and biostatistics professors from the University of Iowa advised the governor not to loosen social-distancing restrictions, KWWL reported. They wrote a research paper for the governor after they were commissioned by the Iowa Department of Public Health.
“We observe a huge range of possible outcomes, from relatively low fatalities to catastrophic loss of life,” the paper said.
The scientists said there was still “considerable uncertainty” over how many deaths the state may eventually have; the projections range from 150 to over 10,000 deaths.
“We have found evidence of a slowdown in infection and mortality rates due to social distancing policies, but not that a peak has been reached,” the paper said. The professors said that did not mean measures should be eased: “Therefore, prevention measures should remain in place. Without such measures being continued, a second wave of infections is likely.”
HENRY KOTULA 