Life After Lockdown in Wuhan

a world that's far from normal. But first, here's what happened today. It was the fifth week that new unemployment claims reached astronomical levels. It brings the five week total during the pandemic to twenty six point five million. That's the steepest labor market downturn since the Great Depression. The numbers suggest that the US jobless rate for April will potentially reach that's double the ten peak reached in the

wake of the two thousand nine financial crisis. Any minute now, the U s House of Representatives is expected to pass the four hundred and eighty four billion dollar interim coronavirus Rescue package. They met for debate leading up to the vote, while taking extraordinary health precautions. Most members were masks and members took turns in the chamber to debate the bill. It was the first time they convened as a group since March. The measure will add new funds to the

paycheck Protection program of loans to small businesses. The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, told EU leaders that its gross domestic product could follow by as much as fifteent. Lagarde set in a video conference with the twenty seven EU heads that they have done too little, too late, according to people familiar with her remarks. Finally, a new antibody test can tell in fourteen minutes whether

someone was infected with a novel coronavirus. According to Siemens Health and Years a G, the company that developed the test, it is more than accurate and will be available by late May. And now our main story. Millions of people in Wuhan, China, the city where the novel coronavirus first emerged, are trying to figure out what life looks like in the bustling industrial city after the worst pandemic in a century.

Bloomberg's Beijing Bureau chief Sharon Chen went to Wuhan recently to see what it looks like to emerge from lockdown. She found a world that still feels far from normal and a population that's keenly aware of both the threat of disease and the watchful eye of China's powerful surveillance state. Bloomberg Senior Executive editor for Economics, Stephanie Flanders, spoke to Sharon for the Stephanomics podcast. Here's some of their conversation. We went to Wuhan on April four, just before the

quarantine was lifted on April eight. The idea was to go there and see, you know, how does the city of more than ten million people emerged from lockdown and it's the first city in the world that went through it. And throughout this whole process, this virus outbreak, Wuhan has kind of been ahead of the curve. Did have been the first city to deal with it, and then now the first city to be lockdown and then for a

city to try to get back to normal. Every thought that going there would maybe give us some clues about what kinds of things would happen when other big cities try to emerge from lockdown. Yeah, so that was the idea behind the trip. And now that I'm back in Beijing, I've been quarantined in my apartment for fourteen days and I can't leave. You were actually and you were just saying, I want to hear Himut what what Wihan? But you

should you have an alarm on your door. But to prevent you from from leaving, they put an alarm on my door that alerts my kind of my property management building a building management whenever I opened the door, and I'm only allowed to open the door to put the trash outside and to pick up food that's delivered or any items I have delivered. I have to report my temperature to three different recheck groups every day, twice a day. Beijing is just on high alert. It's kind of more

paranoid than any other city in China. On Whan, what what struck you most immediately about the experience there, because, as you say, we do look to Wuhan as an extreme example of the impact of the virus, but also a place that was quite far ahead of everywhere else. Yeah, I mean, I think my biggest takeaway is that it was really kind of a two speed recovery or like coming back to normal. So you had the resumption of work and that was really apparent and really immediate, especially

because it was something that the government was pushing. So the day we arrived there were there was hardly any traffic, and by the time we were leaving ten days later, we were getting stuck in traffic constantly at rush hour because people were going to work. You know, factories were working at full production capacity. They were working through the weekends, they worked through the long holiday that we were there

to make up for all the last time. But in terms of consumption, you know, the shopping malls were open, the restaurants were open, but they were basically empty. No one was eating out. Even the few people that we to in the mall said that they don't think that they would go out like they used to before just for fun um, you know, they would really only go out for essential activities. People will still scared, I think, both of the virus, even though there are officially no

cases in Mohan. Now, um they're they're both scared of the virus. It's kind of I think a psychological hangover after being told for weeks and weeks that it's very dangerous outside and you can't go outside and it's dangerous

interact with people. But they were also scared of being quarantined again because in Mohan they have this health code system, so you're either green, yellow, or red, and even going into a shopping mall where later someone else is either suspected or confirmed of having the virus will turn your code yellow and then you can get quarantined again, and your housing compound can refuse to let you leave the

housing compound. So there's kind of like this high level of paranoia about both those things, both the virus and about being locked up again. So I mean, I think consumer habits and just social habits really have changed, and there was kind of this divergence between going to work

and going out for fun. Now that's fascinating, and I think and we are seeing that when we're looking at the sort of high frequency economist are now looking at the high frequency data in Beijing and other cities, and you can see this real there's a sort of bat as you say, there's the kind of supply side and

the demand side. The supply side shock as we used to talk about it has gone because people are more or less back to work, But anything that's to do with spending and consumer activity, particularly at the weekends, is just still way below where it was. And that's obviously concerning for economists thinking about how steep the recovery is. When you look at Wuhan and then you read people still talking about that v shaped recovery that we turn everything back on again, do you think that is is

quite far off the map. Yeah, I mean I think if you listen to you know, like US President Donald Trump saying when we lift the lockdowns, everything's going to go back to normal, it just seems so far removed from what's happening in Buhan. You know, just because people have the freedom to go outside doesn't mean that they want to the idea of people sitting in a crowded restaurant or going to watch a movie in a theater

or going to a concert. I mean, like, I don't think anyone in Mohan would even consider that within the realm of possibility. Being at home for so long, I think it's really changed people in the long term, Like people are just more used to um eating at home, used to cooking at home, not really going out getting food delivered. We also interviewed a restaurant owner. He of

his ten restaurants, none of them have reopened. The original plan was for him to reopen three, and then when he realized that nobody's going out anyway, he decided he was just going to real and one, and eventually he reopened none of them. And he said, you know, people now, they don't go out for lunch on their lunch hour. Everyone's bringing lunch to the office, that bringing home cooked food.

So all these little things that are really going to impact businesses like his, especially small businesses, I think, and I think it goes to that point of the permanence of some of these costs. We know, as you said, the manufacturers are quickly doing the orders that got put on hold, and you could imagine that they might get back eighty or ninety percent of what they would have had. You know, they'll grow much faster now in a classic kind of recovery where and catch up that lost ground.

But in the service sector and spending on things like restaurants, we just we know that we're not going to be eating twice as many restaurant meals in the second half of the year. But what you're telling me is that we may not even be eating half the level of our normal level. That could really have an impact on the pace of the recovery. Well, Sharon, so how long have you got before that bell goes off your our door? When do you when do you get to see the sun?

She field the sunshine again. So I have seven days to go, but Beijing has just said that my district is a high risk area because they discovered a cluster. A student from the US came back and tested positive for the virus two days after he completed his fourteen day quarantine. So there's been some rumors that they could extend it to twenty one days, but so far that hasn't happened. So fingers crossed that I get out in a week. Good luck, fingers crossed, And thanks so much

for all the reporting you're doing. Thank you. That was Stephanie Flanders in conversation with Sharon Chen. For more on what it will take for China and the world to return to normal, listen to the new episode of Stephanomics

out today, and that's it for our show. For more on the coronavirus crisis from a hundred and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg Dot com slash Coronavirus and please, if you appreciate the show, please leave us a review in a rating on Apple Podcasts for Spotify, It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by Me Laura Carlson. The show was produced by Me Tophor foreheads Jordan Gospoure

and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story was reported by Sharon chet Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.