WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A
The coronavirus outbreak
mICHAel reyNOlds/ePA-efe/sHUtterstOCK
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called Monday for every American adult to receive a $1,0 00 check “immediately” amid the outbreak.BY ANNA FIFIELDAs the coronavirus started
spreading across the United
States last week, New York Uni-
versity student Jane Zhang knew
what she needed to do. She need-
ed to seek shelter from the out-
break. At home. In China.
“China has already contained
the situation, and there are no
new domestic cases in Beijing,”
the 19-year-old sophomore said,
“but I think the number of people
with the virus in the United States
is going to rise exponentially.”
So on Friday, the day the num-
ber of cases in New York state rose
30 percent overnight, she board-
ed a flight home to the Chinese
capital. It j ust feels safer, she said,
because authorities there have
made more of an effort to ensure
public health.
“The Chinese government ba-
sically pays for a patient’s recov-
ery, so we don’t have to worry
about how much treatment is
going to cost,” she said, making a
contrast with the U.S. health-care
system.
Plus, she said, Americans
didn’t seem to be taking the
outbreak seriously enough.
In a matter of weeks, China has
gone from being the epicenter of
the virus to almost the only refuge
from it, prompting hundreds of
thousands of Chinese citizens
abroad to flock home. About
20,000 people a day are arriving
on flights into China, while five
times as many arrive by land or
sea, state media reported.
With many flights to China
canceled amid the outbreak, seats
were already relatively scarce.
But the sudden spike in demand
means prices have skyrocketed,
with the few remaining economy-
class seats from U.S. airports go-
ing for four or five times the usual
rate.
Xiangyuan Li, a freshman at
Franklin & Marshall College in
Pennsylvania, had already decid-
ed to return home to Chengdu
after being told on Thursday that
his classes would move online. It
would be boring with everyone
gone from his college town, and
he was worried about not being
able to get into China for his
summer internship.
But the growing outbreak in
the United States cemented his
decision.
“Certainly, China is indeed
very safe now,” Li said.
“The U.S. can’t test everyone,
like in China. Te sting an entire
planeload of passengers and pro-
viding results the next day is
impossible in the U.S.,” he said,
referring to the entry procedures
he went through on arrival in his
home country.
But this mass influx of people
has created a problem for Chinese
authorities as they trumpet their
achievements in containing the
coronavirus and reducing infec-
tion rates to negligible levels:
People are arriving with the dis-
ease.
For the fourth day in a row,
China’s National Health Commis-
sion on Tuesday reported that the
number of imported cases ex-
ceeded domestic transmissions.
It said 21 infections had been
diagnosed the previous day — 20
of which came from abroad. A
total of 143 people have arrived in
the country with the coronavirus,
many of them from hot spots such
as Iran and Italy.
“Preventing imported cases
has become a key task of China’s
epidemic prevention and control
work,” Wang Jun, an official with
the General Administration of
Customs, told reporters in Beijing
this week. “We must resolutely
curb the spread across the bor-
der.”
Nine of the cases reported
Tuesday were detected in Beijing,
explaining why authorities in the
capital are going to extreme mea-
sures to prevent the virus from
spreading in the city that is home
to the Communist Party’s top
officials.
Beijing’s municipal govern-
ment on Sunday introduced rules
requiring all people arriving in
the capital to go into “centralized
quarantine” at hotels for 14 days
upon arrival, at their own ex-
pense.
The rules came into effect
while one American, Jacob Gunt-
er, was in the air on his way to
Beijing. He live-tweeted his jour-
ney through various checks at t he
airport and intermediate staging
posts before finally arriving at his
quarantine hotel a full 12 hours
later.
Other videos posted on social
media showed huge crowds at
Beijing Capital International Air-
port after weeks of it being empty,
as multiple packed planes land-
ed.
Areas across the country, from
Inner Mongolia in the north to
Sanya on the island of Hainan in
the south, have instituted similar
measures, requiring stays in
quarantine centers rather than
trusting people to isolate them-
selves at home. More local au-
thorities are expected to follow
suit.
All manner of methods are
being employed to track down
and punish those caught violat-
ing the rules.
Beijing police have made an
example of a 37-year-old Chinese
woman who works at Massachu-
setts biotechnology company Bio-
gen and attended the Boston con-
ference that has been linked to
other infections, according to lo-
cal media reports.
She failed to report that she
was feeling sick before boarding
her flight, took painkillers to sup-
press her fever and then lied to
flight attendants about her condi-
tion, local police said.
Upon arrival, the suspicious
attendants reported her to police
authorities, who quarantined her
and had her tested for the virus. It
came back positive. She is under
criminal investigation on charges
of obstructing infectious-disease
prevention.
[email protected]Wang yuan in Beijing contributed to
this report.Chinese citizens abroad
return home; o∞cials
wary of new infections
NICOlAs AsfOUrI/AgeNCe frANCe-Presse/getty ImAgesWorkers assist passengers with their luggage at the New China
International Exhibition Center in Beijing. About 20,0 00 people a
day are arriving on flights into China, state media reported.
BY HEATHER LONGAmericans could get a check
for $1,000 or more in the coming
weeks, as political leaders co-
alesce around a dramatic plan to
try to prevent a worse recession
and protect people from going
bankrupt.
The idea took off Monday when
Sen. Mitt R omney (R-Utah) called
for every American adult to re-
ceive a $1,000 check “immediate-
ly” to help tide people over until
other government aid can arrive.
By Tuesday, there was bipartisan
support for the idea, including
from President Trump. The White
House even suggested the
amount could be over $1,000, an
acknowledgment of how big the
economic crisis is becoming.
“We’re looking at sending
checks to Americans immediate-
ly,” Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin said, adding that Trump
wants checks to go out “in the
next two weeks.”
This isn’t a new idea. The Unit-
ed States has taken such a step
twice before. During the Great
Recession, the federal govern-
ment sent almost every adult a
check for $300 to $600 (plus $
per child). The same thing hap-
pened in 2001, when the majority
of Americans received a $
check.
In t he last recession, the checks
went out to pretty much everyone
who wasn’t a millionaire and filed
a U.S. tax return, including people
on Social Security. Americans
earning less than $75,000 got the
full amount, while wealthier peo-
ple got less. The checks were tech-
nically tax “rebates,” meaning
they were part of a larger tax cut.
The coronavirus check proposal
would just be a direct cash pay-
ment that the government would
fund by borrowing money.
Most e conomists across the po-
litical spectrum like this idea be-
cause it’s simple and relatively
fast. Unlike other government aid
— u nemployment insurance, wel-
fare or food stamps — people do
not have to apply for the pay-
ments, and there are no restric-
tions on how to use the money.
As t he U.S. economy comes to a
standstill, job losses are mount-
ing and could reach the millions,
economists say. A $1,000 pay-
ment won’t f ully compensate peo-
ple, but experts and politicians
say it’s a good first step to help
people buy groceries and pay rent.
It works out to the equivalent of
one week of pay for the typical
American, according to the latestLabor Department data, which
shows median weekly earnings of
$936 for full-time workers.
In past downturns, wealthier
Americans tended to save such
money, which blunted the eco-
nomic stimulus, but lower-
income Americans used it imme-
diately to pay bills, a lifeline for
their families and a boost to the
economy. In the past, about two-
thirds of the money was spent
within the first six months of the
checks going out, according to
economic studies of the 2001 and
2008 stimulus efforts.
Many studies have shown that
bumping up food stamps, welfare
and unemployment insurance
during downturns provides an
even larger economic boost for
the same reason: These Ameri-
cans are the most cash-strapped,
and they tend to spend the money
quickly.
There are lots of questions
about doling out money so freely.
Some ask whether it’s w ise to send
money at a time when most Amer-
icans are supposed to stay home
to prevent the spread of the virus.
Others argue that rich people
shouldn’t get checks, since they
do not need it.
Mnuchin said Tuesday that
millionaires would not be getting
the checks. A Democratic propos-
al from Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and
Ro Khanna (Calif.) would give at
least $1,000 to everyone making
less than $65,000. They say that
about 75 percent of Americans
would qualify.
A Democratic plan from Sens.
Michael F. Bennet (Colo.), Cory
Booker of (N.J.) and Sherrod
Brown (Ohio) would go even fur-
ther. It provides $2,000 for every
American adult and child plus
another $1,500 check in the sum-
mer and a $1,000 check in the fall,if the public health emergency
continues. The highest-income
earners would not get checks un-
der the Democratic plan.
“We will need multiple rounds
of money for everyone,” s aid Clau-
dia Sahm, a former Federal Re-
serve economist who is one of the
leading experts on recessions.
“This recession is going to be
more severe than the Great Reces-
sion.”
While Sahm is forecasting a
deeper recession than what hap-
pened in 2007-2009, she said it
might not last as long if policy-
makers act boldly. She has been
talking to lawmakers about a
$1.5 trillion stimulus that would
include these checks along with
aid for states and help for compa-
nies on the verge of bankruptcy.
Economists across the political
spectrum have been urging Con-
gress to send these checks, includ-
ing Greg Mankiw, President
George W. B ush’s c hief economist,
and Jason Furman, President Ba-
rack Obama’s chief economist.
They say the money could proba-
bly be delivered faster today than
it was in 2008, partly because
direct deposit is so widespread
now. Sending to everyone — re-
gardless of their income — could
also speed up the process because
the government would not have
to check income records.
“Considering the difficulty of
identifying the truly needy and
the problems inherent in trying to
do so, sending every American a
$1,000 check asap would be a
good start,” Mankiw wrote on his
blog.
Furman put it this way:
“Thrilled to see @MittRomney
proposing $1,000 checks. This
would [be] a critical floor of social
insurance for hundreds of mil-
lions of Americans and wouldhelp the economy rebound more
quickly when we are past the
virus lockdown phase.”
The money probably can’t go
out within two weeks, as the
White House proposed. In 2 008, it
took about two months to get the
checks to people, notes Mattie
Duppler, a fellow at the right-
leaning National Ta xpayers
Union. But she said it’s reason-
able that the money could start
going out in April.
The Internal Revenue Service
has many people’s direct-deposit
information, given that close to
90 percent of people filed their
tax returns online last year. Mon-
ey could be delivered even faster
to a lot of the hardest-hit people if
it were sent via Social Security
payments to the elderly or via the
Electronic Benefit Transfer debit
cards that government aid recipi-
ents already have.
Sahm, the recession expert, has
urged Congress and the White
House to send out the initial
checks quickly and then say they
will do more if the unemployment
rate jumps above a certain level
this summer.
“The world is de facto at war,”
French economist Olivier
Blanchard, the former top econo-
mist at the International Mone-
tary Fund, wrote on Twitter. He
urged the U.S. government not to
hold back on spending.
While some have raised con-
cerns that sending checks to most
Americans comes with a hefty
price tag that could send this
year’s budget deficit to a record
$2 trillion or more, Blanchard
points out that’s about 10 percent
of the nation’s economy. During
World War II, the United States
ran deficits of over 20 percent of
gross domestic product.
[email protected]Proposal to send $1,000 checks gains momentum
Stimulus strategy gets
bipartisan support from
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