Why the West’s coronavirus response shows it isn’t better than the rest of us

Complacency and hubris caused economically advanced societies to believe they could easily handle the threat without understanding it fully

The failure of Western leaders to properly prepare has exposed their weaknesses, and could mark a turning point in global history

Tan Tarn How Published: 6 Apr, 2020 SCMP

A woman arrives in an ambulance at a hospital in New York on Sunday. Photo: AFP

The coronavirus story was not supposed to unfold like this. While China has clawed itself out of its self-made pit, most of Europe and the United States remain mired in an escalating crisis, with the prospect of relief not yet in sight.

This unexpected reversal of fortune had happened because the Western world should have learned from China and other countries in East and Southeast Asia – but dithered until it was too late.

How did the West end up being the epicentre of the global pandemic? The main reasons are inexperience, a disunited population and hubris.

Its inexperience is not its own fault. Five of the six places that have been praised for their management of the novel coronavirus – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China (eventually) and my own country Singapore , which is now threatened by a second, graver wave of infections – were some of the worst affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2002 to 2004. The sixth, South Korea, escaped relatively unscathed that time around.

A man has a swab taken at a ‘drive though’ testing centre in South Korea, which has been lauded for its handling of the pandemic. Photo: Reuters

That outbreak, which was similarly caused by a coronavirus thought to have originated in China, killed 774 – or 9.6 per cent – of the 8,098 people it infected. So when the novel coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease arrived in January, these places deployed the same strategies that eventually subdued Sars: early detection, contact tracing and social isolation.

The governments and peoples of the West, however, had not seen something like Covid-19 in living memory.

The second reason for the crisis in the West is that their populations are not working together, with many defying attempts to enforce social isolation and quarantines. Governments are partly to blame for a lack of clarity in communications. In the US, for example, official advice has varied wildly. At first, the virus was dismissed as a hoax or no worse than the flu, but now citizens are being told the threat it poses is real and serious.

This has led to “deniers and disbelievers” defying restrictions on movement and travel, according to The New York Times, which said the crisis had “exposed the relationship between individuals and society and our responsibility to others”.

Members of the public walk on a beach in northwest England on Sunday, despite official advise to stay indoors. Photo: AP

To be sure, Asia has also seen its share of people flouting movement controls, but not on the scale seen in the West. Perhaps aware of this, a European embassy in Singapore recently messaged its citizens living in the country reminding them to follow local rules.

Though it should not be overstated in this modern age, it is interesting to note that the six places mentioned above that have been praised for their handling of the pandemic are all to a certain extent Confucian societies, where a greater emphasis is placed on the role of the community than the individual – a trait shared by many Asian societies. 

MY BELIEF IS THAT MAO TZE TUNG WAS A CONFUCIAN MORE SO THAN A MARXIST READ HIS TEXTS LIKE "ON CONTRADICTION", THEN READ SOME CONFUCIUS BOTH ARE APHORISTIC TEXTS.

This might be dismissed as meek obedience to authority, but it is not. It is born from the understanding that each individual’s self interest is best taken care of by contributing to the welfare of the community as a whole – pay out to get paid in. So even in Hong Kong, racked by anti-government protests right up to the onset of the pandemic, the population remarkably complied with an administration many see as lacking political legitimacy and as caring more about Beijing than what the people think. They realised the dire threat facing society – and themselves – and that political differences notwithstanding, they had better stick together than face the alternative.

The most important reason that Western societies failed is their complacency, hubris even. They believed that as economically advanced nations, they could easily handle the threat without understanding it fully.

A nurse tends to a coronavirus patient in a hospital’s intensive care unit in Wuhan last month. Photo: Xinhua

Clearly, China must take the blame for not snuffing out the outbreak right from the start and hopefully it will learn from its mistakes. But the pandemic in the West would not have happened if countries had not ignored the early warnings of the
World Health Organisation for all to prepare for the deluge.

From January to February, the West sneered at China’s initial missteps: for allowing wildlife markets to operate and for censoring early whistle-blowers and hiding the truth. Later, when Beijing finally woke up to the danger and put in place lockdowns and other measures to contain the escalating outbreak, the West scoffed. Such “draconian” approaches would not work, they said, and could never happen in the “free world”. It was “brutal” when China did it, but has become “necessary” now that the West is doing the same.

The thinking seems to be that China is economically huge but fundamentally part of the Third World. China is communist and can only fumble, which is why it got into trouble in the first place.

This hubris meant that the West – believing itself to know better – squandered the lead time it had to plan, act and learn. The few relatively bright spots in this picture are New Zealand, Iceland and Germany, all with women leaders, which is probably not a coincidence.

The coronavirus has been called an equaliser, which is true to the extent that nations rich or poor, big or small, democratic or authoritarian can be equally ravaged – though the more developed countries are better placed to look after their sick. The other side of the coin is that governments can lessen the blow irrespective of size, wealth and political systems. Hong Kong and Singapore are tiny specks compared to China, Vietnam and South Korea. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are advanced economies, while Vietnam is a developing country with scant resources that has won kudos for its low-cost but successful strategy. China and Vietnam are communist but Taiwan and South Korea are full-fledged democracies.

The point of this article is not to kick someone when they are down. The rest of the world hopes, for everyone’s sakes, that the pandemic in the West will be over soon. Humanity is in this together. But there is a lesson to be learned. Up until now, much of the West saw itself and was often seen by others – consciously or not – as more advanced, superior to the rest of the world and deserving of its lecturing of others. Its handling of the pandemic has put paid to much of that. Its leaders failed their citizens, and the world. This crisis will perhaps mark an inflection point in global history.


Tan Tarn How is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the National University of Singapore and a Singapore playwright and arts activist.

For the coronavirus-stricken West, blaming China is a dangerous waste of time

Consigning the problem to the Chinese regime and culture – ‘the other’ – has just bred negligence and hubris in the West, which contributed to delays in containing the outbreak and wasted the precious head start China won with its draconian lockdowns

Bai Tongdong Published: 9 Apr, 2020

Consigning the problem to ‘the other’ – China’s regime and culture – has just bred negligence and hubris in the West, writes Bai Tongdong. Illustration: Craig Stephens

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has used “ Wuhan virus,” and, until recently, President Donald Trump often used “ Chinese virus,” to refer to the novel coronavirus. These terms contribute to the discrimination against East Asians in America and Europe. Their use has also been criticised as an attempt to cover up the failure of the American government’s responses to the outbreak.

A more serious problem is that the idea implicit in these terms – that the outbreak is a Chinese problem – and the negligence and hubris associated with it, contributed to a Western failure to properly respond to the outbreak. The danger is that humanity learns the wrong lesson and blindly awaits the next disaster, after paying a terrible price this time.
For some, the origin of the pandemic is the problem of “the other”, in that the outbreak originated in the “weird” and “backward” eating habits of Chinese. But anyone with just a basic knowledge of the history of pandemics should know that the main sources of contagion are livestock and other animals (such as rats) that have been with us since humans became settled farmers.

We have had many diseases from these animals in the long history of agrarian life and, as a result, have developed either immunity or treatments. The real danger of eating exotic meat is to introduce a new source of contagion.

But increased human exposure to nature through economic activity and tourism also brings new sources of contagious diseases, such as the Zika virus and Lyme disease. The focus on the meat of exotic and wild animals is thus misleading.

Moreover, the danger of consuming exotic meat does not come from the occasional eating of game by a hunter or a wealthy man in an isolated area, but from the large demand from China’s fast-growing middle class for what were once rare delicacies for the wealthy or the isolated few. This demand leads to problems of how to regulate the raising, transport and slaughter of these “wild” animals as well as “normal” livestock.

Therefore, if there is a cultural issue, it is about a fast-growing middle class in an industrialised country, in a globalised world, that still holds on to the attitudes of its agrarian and relatively isolated past. The focus should be on the regulation of the whole process of bringing meat to consumers, and of human encroachments on nature: a pressing political problem in this globalised and industrialised world.

Some people also believe that the cause of this pandemic is the Chinese regime, “the other” to the Western liberal democratic regime. It is true that although the Chinese government failed to regulate wet markets and people’s mouths, in terms of what they eat, it has
succeeded in shutting people’s mouths in terms of what they say.

China orders complete ban on trade in wildlife for food to combat coronavirus epidemic
Some people then conclude that this outbreak must be a failure of “the other” regime, as well as “the other” culture. However, partly due to the complacency of such thinking, many Western democratic countries have failed to respond to the outbreak properly.

To be sure, other countries’ failure to respond is different from China’s failure to kill the spread in its infancy. But could liberal democracies guarantee that they would be able to suppress a similar outbreak?

Chinese leaders suppressed information because they thought the spread was under control, and if they had known what would happen, they would probably have taken drastic action earlier to control the spread, although they may still have silenced people.

Trump says US approaching a ‘horrendous’ time as coronavirus death toll rises
But since the Wuhan lockdown on January 23, in spite of possible government suppression of information, the terrible power of this new virus has been obvious, yet many Western democracies still failed to respond properly, in spite of the weeks of preparation time China won for the West through its draconian lockdowns.

Trump claimed that the summer heat would kill the virus (and the threat to his re-election), and politicians in the West had all sorts of reasons to ignore the threat. One cannot help but wonder, is it necessarily the case that a free and democratic society could do better?

It should be common knowledge among political observers that effective governance is not necessarily the strong suit of liberal democracies. Rather, the true merits of a liberal society are its freedom of the press and information, and its rule of law. This does not guarantee a timely response to a virus outbreak, but at least whistle-blowers would not have been harassed by the police, and people’s anger would not be suppressed online through permanently blocking their accounts in an arbitrary manner.

But are we doomed to choose between dying with our anger suppressed or dying with our emotions vented? Can we not combine effective governance and free speech? 

Singapore tolerates far more freedom of information than China, and South Korea is a liberal democracy.

Their responses to the pandemic have been relatively successful so far, although their situations have not been as dire as in China’s Hubei province. As I argue in my book, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case, the democratic part of a liberal democracy contributes to the ineffectiveness of governance and may even threaten the “liberal” part.
The solution is a hybrid regime that combines the voice of the people through popular elections with more decision-making power given to the “meritocrats”, people such as
Dr Anthony Fauci, which is firmly built on the protection of rights and the rule of law.


Globalisation blurs the boundaries between the self and the other, and the dilemma is that this process of transcending nations is led by nation states. International organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the United Nations are toothless.

The solution, then, may be an alliance of the humane (the Confucian idea of ren) and great powers that police the world under the banner of “humane duty overrides sovereignty”. Unfortunately, given the obsession with blaming “the other”, the future of humanity remains uncertain.

Bai Tongdong is a professor of philosophy at Fudan University in China and the author of Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case

Bai Tongdongis a professor of philosophy at Fudan University in China and a global professor of law at NYU’s Law School

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Why China is not responsible for pandemic

Beijing bought time for the world with its draconian lockdown of the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, but many countries, notably Britain and the United States, squandered it


Alex Lo Published: 8 Apr, 2020

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

In early February, The Wall Street Journal published the by-now infamous opinion piece titled “The real sick man of Asia”, by Walter Russell Mead, an international politics professor.
If you read it now, its scientific ignorance is far more illuminating than its “analysis”. But it was a myopia shared by many people around the world: they thought
the epidemic was mainly China’s problem. Medical authorities, though, knew by then that it would be a global problem.

Mead knew as much about epidemiology as the next taxi driver. That may be why he thought, like many pundits at the time, that the global impact of the outbreak in China would be on the supply chains of international companies.

“The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades,” he wrote.

“The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicise” their supply chains.”


By December 31, Beijing had informed the World Health Organisation about the outbreak. By January 23, an unprecedented lockdown was imposed in Wuhan. Whatever cover-ups and concealment of cases China was guilty of, by January, the entire world knew about the severity of the Chinese epidemic.

What The New York Times wrote about Spain is equally true of many countries, notably Britain and the United States: “Spain’s crisis has demonstrated that one symptom of the virus … has been the tendency of one government after another to ignore the experiences of countries where the virus has struck before it.”

Yet, in trying to evade responsibility, British and American political leaders such as British cabinet minister Michael Gove, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump are now claiming: if only China had told us earlier, if only they hadn’t lied about their cases, we would have responded in time.

No, they would not have, and in fact, did not. They had time to prepare but chose not to.

Whatever malfeasance Beijing had committed, locking down Wuhan cut the number of coronavirus cases exported to the outside world by 77 per cent, according to an international study that was led by Matteo Chinazzi of the Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston and published in Science.

China bought time for the world; many governments squandered it.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Why China is not responsible for pandemic

Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.

America's small-business owners hoped a $349 billion lifeline from Washington would pull them through the pandemic. Here's the inside story of how its launch spectacularly unraveled in 24 hours.
Bartie Scott, Jennifer Ortakales and Dominick Reuter BUSINESS INSIDER 4/8/2020

Main Street in Livingston, Montana, after Gov. Steve Bullock ordered the closing of restaurants, bars, and theaters in response to the coronavirus. William Campbell/Getty

The federal government promised that relief funding for small businesses ravaged by coronavirus would be up and running on April 3.

But in the 24 hours before applications were scheduled to open, media reports showed that a critical piece of the plan was already falling though.

Banks threatened to opt out of lending to America's struggling businesses until the Treasury addressed key concerns.

A signature provision of the $349 billion assistance package called the Payroll Protection Program was promised as a lifeboat for US small businesses.

This is the story of how, in the days leading up to the PPP's April 3 launch, a combination of high demand, conflicting information, and uneasy cooperation between the public and private sector threatened to sink it.


The morning of Friday, April 3, dawned with so much hope: It was when thousands of business owners expected to get a step closer to the $349 billion in government relief they desperately needed to maintain payroll, afford rent, and otherwise keep America's economy chugging during a historic pandemic.

That hope soured by midday.

Entrepreneurs and founders rushed to apply for the financial lifeline through their banks, the federally designated gatekeepers of the loans and grants, only to be met with chaos. Online portals flashed delay notices. Webpages broke. Emails asked they patiently keep waiting.

John Resnick, an entrepreneur, raged on Twitter that two different banks told him they weren't ready to process loans. Fellow business owner Eric Martel fumed that Bank of America quickly denied him funds to help pay his employees, despite his being a business customer there for 17 years.

"Being a #bankofamerica business customer is like being one of the poor on the Titanic," founder Lisa Dye wrote on her own Twitter feed. "We don't get the lifeboats!"

These and the countless other grievances that flooded social media and the inboxes of Business Insider reporters throughout that day paint a picture of a system completely unprepared to handle what many had already predicted would be historic volumes of financial-aid requests.

About 30 million small businesses in the US employ half the country's labor force. By the time night fell on April 3 — and by then, a quarter of US small businesses had been forced to shutter, furlough, or otherwise drastically scale back — only 17,000 loans had been successfully processed.

Business Insider spoke with experts and business owners, pored through reports from our newsroom and other media sources, and stayed glued to the grumblings of exasperated entrepreneurs across social media to piece together a troubling puzzle: how a much anticipated federal-relief program floundered so spectacularly in 24 hours, leaving the bedrock of America's economy without aid or hope just when both were most needed.
The government sets a game plan for relief

The hope that Washington would swoop in to save small businesses first flared on March 27, when President Trump signed into law the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The ballyhooed bill with the publicity friendly name featured Congress' plan to bail out small-business owners, who were left particularly reeling as coronavirus quarantines turned Main Streets across the US into ghost towns.

The legislation established a $350 billion fund for a pair of small-business-assistance measures, most notably the Paycheck Protection Program that would provide loans for employers and independent contractors to cover payroll and expenses during the crisis. It was even reported that businesses that were able to fully keep or rehire employees would not have to pay back PPP loans.

To make sure struggling founders had fast access to this cash, the law set down a simple plan. Congress tasked the US Treasury with setting loan terms, while the Small Business Administration (SBA) was responsible for approving and guaranteeing the loans through E-Tran, its system for processing electronic applications. Banks across the country would dole out funds to business owners, who could spend the money on certain taxes, mortgage or rent payments, utilities, interest on preexisting debt, and a variety of costs associated with workers' pay and benefits.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin set a big date on the calendar: Small-business owners would be able to visit their usual banks or fintech platforms to apply for funds on April 3 — barely a week after the bill was signed into law.

"We expect this will be very, very easy," he told Fox Business on March 29.
Red flags mount days before PPP opens to public

It quickly became clear that some of the plan's key players weren't on board with the government's financial Hail Mary.

Representatives from national and community banks told Reuters they didn't want to take on the legal and financial liability of vetting applications on such a short timeline because it meant they'd bear the brunt of any fraud.

Smaller banks also worried about how long they'd have to keep loans on their books. They appealed to the Treasury to create a secondary market that would allow financial institutions to buy and sell PPP loans from each other much like they do with mortgages. Freeing up their balance sheets would increase the number of customers they could reach without holding a dangerous amount of debt.

Revised guidance from the Treasury released late on Tuesday, March 31, further infuriated banks and created a melange of shifting rules that added to the confusion of the short timeline.

The Treasury slashed the allowed interest rate from 4.75% to just 0.5%, which dramatically reduced the promised payout for lenders. (Banks would still collect fees up to 5% of the loan principal.) Additionally, loan terms were reduced from 10 years to just two, dramatically raising possible monthly payments for borrowers whose loans aren't forgiven. A new requirement also said that only 25% of nonpayroll expenses would be forgiven, instead of the 100% originally promised.

Big and small banks alike lobbied the Treasury and the SBA to amend their terms, according to Bloomberg. Bank of America even reached out to Ivanka Trump, since the first daughter had long been the administration's de facto entrepreneurship czar.

For the whole plan to work, the government had to get the banks to agree to participate. But with less than a day to go before PPP loan applications opened, Reuters reported that thousands of banks were threatening to opt out.

JPMorgan Chase emailed customers on April 2 to say it would "most likely not be able to start accepting applications" the next day, CNBC reported.

Jill Castilla, the CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond in Oklahoma, tweeted, "Right now, there is too much ambiguity and too little structure."

All this wrangling worked to the banks' advantage, sort of. On the evening of April 2, Mnuchin increased interest rates from 0.5% to 1%. He also announced that independent contractors (the freelancers or consultants that small-business owners often hire on a temporary basis) would not be included in employee counts. This meant that entrepreneurs could only use costs spent on full-time employees to determine the dollar amount of their PPP loan, while their true costs might be much higher in reality.

The controversy over the changing loan terms masked another problem: Most financial institutions were still scrambling to set up technology systems capable of handling the mass volume of borrower applications. The SBA's own electronic loan-approval platform was hastily scaled up to handle over 60 million applicants. For comparison, it processed just 52,000 loans in all of 2019.

Small-business owners are met with disarray and denial

Brent Underwood, owner of the HK Austin hostel, in Texas, shut down his business for three months because of the coronavirus pandemic. "We have a mortgage payment, utilities, employees, and an empty building," he told Business Insider. "We've somehow made it work for six years now, but this is looking like it may be the end."

The government's PPP loans were the best chance of survival for his business.

When the application floodgates opened on the morning of April 3, Underwood was one of thousands of business owners who were met with a patchwork of inconsistent bank protocols.

"The information and procedures seem to be changing daily," Underwood said. "Keeping up with them has become a part-time job in itself!"

Andy LaPointe, owner of Traverse Bay Farms, in Bellaire, Michigan, needed $10,000 to keep his business alive and five employees on staff. He told Business Insider he was up at 6 a.m. that Friday to prepare all his documents and information, even though his local bank didn't open applications until noon.

When he called the number the bank designated for the loans, he says he was disconnected three times in the two hours he was on hold.

This tracks with reporting from Marketplace Morning, which wrote that many banks said they weren't ready for the high demand — and that they blamed Mnuchin's last-minute tweaks on April 2 for the confusion.

It was fast becoming clear that the volume of applications would exceed the system's capacity. By 9 a.m., the time at which many banks open, 700 loans totaling $2.5 million had already been processed, The New York Times reported.

Many business owners logged on to their bank's website to find they were not yet accepting applications. Others were directed to broken webpages.

Bank of America was the first major bank to open applications about 9 a.m., a spokesperson told Business Insider. But screenshots from about noon showed it had imposed new lending restrictions, requiring that applicants already have a credit card or previous loans with the bank as of February 15 to be eligible. Customers with savings and checking accounts didn't meet this bar and were blocked from applying for loans.

One frustrated Twitter user posted that she couldn't get a PPP loan regardless of the years she's used Bank of America.
—Lisa Dye (@lisamdye) April 3, 2020

JPMorgan Chase started lending at noon. Wells Fargo and Citibank weren't accepting applications, saying they were holding out until receiving more clarifications from the Treasury, according to Reuters.

Virginia Democratic congressman Don Beyer posted images of broken webpages and delay notices from Chase, Capital One, and Citibank. "Here's what small business owners are looking at right now when they try to get PPP loans from banks," he wrote.
—Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) April 3, 2020

According to Beyer's images, Chase's site showed an error message. Capital One told site visitors that it was still awaiting information from the SBA and Treasury. Citibank's site displayed a message saying the SBA was "currently developing regulations and guidelines" and that when received, the bank would begin lending.

Entrepreneurs raged on social media, specifically over Bank of America's surprise requirements. By early afternoon, the hashtags #PPPloans and #bankofamerica were trending on Twitter.

LaPointe, the Michigan business owner, told Business Insider that he was finally able to reach a branch manager who took his application over the phone. She told him their system was overloaded with callers and she had another customer waiting on the line to apply.

"As a small-business owner, you have to be patient and persistent," he said.

At the end of the day, SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza announced on Twitter that the Paycheck Protection Program had processed more than 17,000 loans valued at more than $5.4 billion in its first day, more than doubling the agency's $2.2 billion disaster lending total for the year before.

But smaller banks said they experienced slowdowns in the SBA system throughout the day on Friday, and had trouble reaching federal agencies for help, according to The New York Times and American Banker.

"The expectation that this $2 trillion package would go through Congress and that the money would be flowing three days later, that was never a realistic expectation," Patrick Ryan, the chief executive of New Jersey lender First Bank, told The Times.
The headaches become a days-long affair

The chaos spilled into the weekend. On Saturday, April 4, Jim Axelrod reported on "CBS This Morning" that the SBA loan-application page turned out to have a disturbing glitch that displayed small-business owners' personal details — including names, date of birth, Social Security numbers, and other contact information — to others applying for the same loan.

In a Twitter thread on Saturday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio acknowledged the issues with Friday's launch, including website problems, contradicting and incomplete guidance, and the need for more money. He said the "complications" were to be expected from a $349 billion plan that had been passed only a week before.

Brad Bolton, the CEO of Community Spirit Bank, in Mississippi, said on an April 7 conference call with Trump (which Business Insider reporters attended) that his institution had been "locked out" of the SBA system until Sunday.

"We worked through the weekend preparing applications," Bolton said. "As a matter of fact, I was up three nights until 2 a.m. submitting loans to get the money flowing."

While Trump congratulated Bank of America, the US Treasury, the SBA, and local banks on Twitter, business owners spent the weekend anxiously awaiting approval — sometimes after applying to multiple banks.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2020
"I will immediately ask Congress for more money to support small businesses under the #PPPloan if the allocated money runs out. So far, way ahead of schedule," he wrote.


But loans approved are not necessarily loans disbursed, and America's harried business owners entered another week still in urgent need of working capital.
One in 4 businesses are on the verge of permanent failure

Monday, April 6, the second day of lending, was plagued with a continued rash of SBA system outages.

Wells Fargo began lending on Monday, but announced its participation would be capped at $10 billion, primarily focused on smaller borrowers. Regulators had instituted the lending cap after the bank was found guilty of fraudulently opening millions of accounts over several years. The ability of the San Francisco giant — once the country's largest small-business lender — to assist even its own customers was now severely limited. On Wednesday, April 8, the Federal Reserve announced it would "narrowly modify" the restrictions on the bank's participation in the relief program.

Wells Fargo declined an interview for this story and instead directed us to its PPP website, which mentions the bank's focus on nonprofits and businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

When asked for an interview, Bank of America emailed Business Insider that as of 9 a.m. on April 6, it had received about 178,000 applications seeking some $33 billion in loans.

A senior administration official at the US Treasury sent Business Insider a statement saying the "unprecedented $350 billion Main Street assistance program" had approved $35 billion in disbursements to more than 100,000 small businesses. It added that it would set up a hotline starting April 6 to answer questions from banks.

A spokesperson from JP Morgan Chase said by email that the bank was "optimistic that the process for inputting the applications into the SBA system will get easier and faster this week so that we can work really quickly to get our customers the help they need."

The SBA did not return a request for comment.

Discontent continued to bubble as days passed

In a webinar video obtained by The Washington Post, SBA Nevada district director Joseph Amato flayed big banks for delays and resistance to federal directives. "Some of the big banks ... and this is just editorial ... that had no problem taking billions of dollars of free money as bailout in 2008 are now the biggest banks that are resistant to helping small businesses," Amato said.

On Tuesday, April 7, as tensions between public officials and private institutions simmered, Mnuchin announced that he had requested an additional $250 billion for small-business loans from Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement saying he expected to call a vote as soon as Thursday.

America's businesses can't wait much longer.
A report from MetLife and the US Chamber of Commerce notes that one in four small or midsize businesses are less than two months from shutting down for good.

In hindsight, April 3 seems like the beginning of what will be a long process of trial and error. Those who weren't able to apply on Friday persist in their efforts this week.

Joe Shamie had been waiting for nearly a month to apply for the $2.5 million loan he needs to keep payroll for his 300 employees at the furniture maker Delta Children. He said his banker at Wells Fargo told him his company would be one of the first in line to receive emergency funding.

But when the bank opened applications on Monday, Shamie said he was shoved to the end of the line, along with many other business owners scrambling to find another way in once Wells Fargo reached its lending threshold.


"We were devastated," Shamie said.

He has already contacted his accountant, lawyer, friends, and several other banks to exhaust all his options. At this point, the last thing he can do is give up hope.

"If I gave up on the loan, there would be a lot of people out of work," he said.

The coronavirus outbreak in New York mainly originated from travelers from Europe, new studies show

Doctors test hospital staff for coronavirus at St. Barnabas 

hospital in the Bronx on March 24, 2020. Misha Friedman/Getty Images


The coronavirus outbreak in New York mainly originated from travelers from Europe, not Asia, according to new studies.

Researchers also found the coronavirus was circulating in the city as early as mid-February — weeks before a European travel ban was imposed by President Donald Trump on March 11.

"People were just oblivious," Dr. Adriana Heguy, a member of the research team from New York University, told The New York Times.


New research suggests the coronavirus outbreak in New York mainly originated from travelers from Europe, not Asia, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Studies also found the coronavirus was circulating the New York area as early as mid-February, revealing the virus has been spreading long before more aggressive testing measures were put into place.

Two separate research teams studying the genomes of infected patients in New York came to the same conclusion despite having looked at two different case groups, The Times reported.

"People were just oblivious," Dr. Adriana Heguy, a member of the research team from New York University, told The Times.

The country's first confirmed coronavirus case was detected in Washington state on January 19. A little under two weeks later on January 31, President Donald Trump implemented a ban on foreign nationals entering the country if they had been to China in the past 14 days.

On March 11, Trump also imposed a travel ban from all countries in Europe except for the UK, following an unprecedented nationwide lockdown in Italy, which has the highest coronavirus death toll globally.

Nonetheless, travelers from Europe carrying the virus were already entering the country via New York weeks before the ban.

"The majority is clearly European," Dr. Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told The Times.

As of April 8, the coronavirus has infected more than 435,000 in the US, and nearly 15,000 people have died. In New York alone, there are at least 151,069 cases and 6,268 deaths.

Amazon employees walk off the job after company informs them of COVID-19 case

Dozens of Amazon facilities have now reported cases of COVID-19.

 Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Workers at an Amazon delivery station in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, started "freaking out" after receiving an automated message telling them a colleague had been infected with the novel coronavirus, an employee told Business Insider.

Amazon confirmed that 15 employees immediately walked off the job, telling Business Insider that the infected person had last worked April 2.

"I worked that shift, so I am worried sick," one employee said.

Over a dozen employees walked off the job at an Amazon facility outside Philadelphia on Tuesday following the news that one of their colleagues had been diagnosed with COVID-19, Business Insider can report.

Workers at the sorting facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, were informed via an automated message that someone who had been on-site April 2 was infected with the novel coronavirus.

"When the automated phone call started coming through, people started freaking out," one employee told Business Insider.

The company confirmed that employees at its delivery station were indeed informed of the COVID-19 case on April 7 — and that the news spurred an exodus. "There were 15 associates who left the facility," Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski told Business Insider.

On March 31, The Wall Street Journal reported that staff at the King of Prussia facility were struggling to keep up with the demands of their job, with one employee telling the newspaper that she was now responsible for sorting twice as many packages as before the crisis.

The employee who alerted Business Insider to news of the walk-out said they had little faith that their safety was being ensured, despite efforts by Amazon to increase social distancing, such as removing tables from break rooms and abandoning start-of-the-shift meetings. The company has also temporarily increased hourly pay by $2, while doubling the rate for overtime.

To assuage fears, the worker said, the company should do more than check temperatures.

"With the way this virus is spread, everyone in the building should be tested," they said, noting that the company only started providing masks this week. "I worked that [April 2] shift," they said, "so I am worried sick."

Dozens of Amazon facilities have now reported positive COVID-19 tests among staff. The company itself has refused to respond to requests for a list of all known cases, however, only providing confirmation after employees leak word to the press.

CDC issues new guidance saying essential workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 can RETURN to work if showing no symptoms in first step towards reopening the U.S. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines Wednesday night for essential workers who are exposed to COVID-19 

Exposed critical workers can go back to work if they're asymptomatic 

Previously all exposed workers were told to isolate for 14 days 

They have to follow new guidelines including taking their temperature before work, wearing a face mask at all times, and practicing social distancing 

Employers in essential industries are also being told to send sick workers home, take temperatures of employees and increase air exchange in buildings 

Senate Democrats are now rallying behind these critical employees by calling for a 'Heroes Fund' to increase their pay by up to $25,000


By MARLENE LENTHANG FOR DAILYMAIL.CO
UPDATED: 21:50 EDT, 8 April 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8202725/CDC-issues-new-guidance-rules-essential-workers-exposed-coronavirus.html
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines Wednesday night to get workers in critical fields who are exposed to the deadly coronavirus back to work faster.

Under prior guidelines workers were told to stay home for 14 days if they were exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Under new guidelines critical workers, in fields such as health care or food supply, can go back to work as long as they are asymptomatic.

They will have to follow certain conditions including taking their temperature before going to work, wearing a face mask at all times, and practicing social distancing. The move to relax guidelines on essential workers in the workplace is the first step in the reopening the US, as President Donald Trump tweets the economy will 'open sooner than people think.'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines Wednesday night to get workers in critical fields who are exposed to the deadly coronavirus back to work faster. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pictured announcing those new guidelines at a White House press conference

The move to relax guidelines on essential workers in the workplace is the first step in the reopening the US, as President Donald Trump tweets the economy will 'open sooner than people think'


Trump has been adamant in his press briefings and tweets that the US will re-open soon, despite skepticism from top health officials

Exposed workers are also ordered to not share headsets or objects used near the face and to not congregate in the break room or other crowded places.

The new measures will allow critical workers to get back to work faster than before, as long as they don't exhibit symptoms.

The rules will also affect first responders, workers in critical manufacturing, and transportation employees.

'One of the most important things we can do is keep our critical workforce working,' CDC Director Robert Redfield said while unveiling the new guidelines during a White House news briefing on Wednesday.

Under the new guidelines, employers in critical industries are also given new rules to follow. They must send workers home immediately if they are sick and try to increase their working space and air exchange in buildings.

The CDC’s new guidelines for employers in essential industries include taking employees’ temperatures and assessing symptoms prior to work, increasing the frequency of cleaning commonly touched surfaces, increasing air exchange in the building, and testing the use of face masks to ensure they don’t interfere with workflow. 

However, allowing exposed people to continue working if they don't exhibit symptoms could backfire as some COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic and can still spread the virus. Many don’t even know they have the virus because they don’t exhibit any symptoms. 

'Some of the best minds here at the White House are beginning to think about what recommendations will look like that we give to businesses, that we give to states, but it will all, I promise you, be informed on putting the health and well-being of the American people first,' Vice President Mike Pence said at the briefing. 

Senate Democrats are now rallying behind these critical employees by calling for a 'Heroes Fund' to increase their pay by up to $25,000.  

In the US there are over 422,000 cases of coronavirus and there have been over 14,000 deaths as of Wednesday evening.

While most of the country is on lockdown orders and citizens are urged to stay home at all costs, critical workers are risking their lives every day in the field. 

Food suppliers, healthcare workers, bus and train drivers, and employees in grocery stores are the critical workers keeping the nation up and running, as the country barrels towards its projected virus peak day on April 16.

Getting essential workers back into the field is a pressing priority for the country as the coronavirus cases continue to climb and hospitals scramble to keep up with the pace.  

Medical workers on the front lines of the outbreak face a high risk of exposure and some have already tragically passed away while treating COVID-19 patients.  

On Wednesday  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered flags around the state to fly at half-mast in honor of those who have died from COVID-19 after recording the state's deadliest 24 hours which claimed 779 lives.  

Still, many health officials including Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, have voiced concern over reopening the nation’s economy too soon.

In a press briefing on Sunday Fauci said that between 25 and 50 percent of infected Americans are not exhibiting symptoms of the virus.

He added: 'That is an estimate. I don’t have any scientific data yet to say that.'  


Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, looks at a chart as Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a briefing about the coronavirus Wednesday night

A chart was displayed at the White House press conference giving employers in essential industries a list of do's and don'ts in handling employees who have been exposed to COVID-19