A2| Saturday/Sunday, March 7 - 8, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Thursday about China’s labor
market and an accompanying
chart incorrectly said that the
survey was of more than 8,
companies and that the re-
sponses represented the com-
panies’ plans rather than re-
spondents’ observations. Also,
19% of respondents said they
had observed business fail-
ures. The chart incorrectly
said 19% of businesses had
filed for bankruptcy.A graphic with a Sports
article Friday about women’s
college basketball misspelled
Mississippi as Mississipi.Jack Welchbecame chair-
man and chief executive of
General ElectricCo. in 1981.
In an obituary for Mr. Welch
published Tuesday, the year
was incorrectly stated as 1980
in one instance.In a surveyof more than
8,000 working professionals
by Chinese recruitment web-
site Zhaopin in mid-February,
nearly one-third of respon-
dents said they had observed
companies cutting jobs, and
46% said they knew of firms
that hadn’t paid salaries on
time. A World News articleU.S. NEWS
U.S. WATCH
NEW YORKMadoff Shouldn’t Be
Freed, Prosecutors SayFederal prosecutors in Man-
hattan say Bernard Madoff, the
architect of one of the biggest
financial frauds in U.S. history,
should die in prison and doesn’t
deserve to be released early
from his 150-year sentence.
Mr. Madoff in February had
asked for a reduced sentence on
the grounds of compassionate re-
lease, saying he was dying of end-
stage renal disease. On Thursday,
federal prosecutors said Mr. Ma-
doff, 81 years old, could live longer
than the 18 months, as his doctor
predicted, and that he hasn’t ac-
cepted responsibility for his crimes.
Mr. Madoff is incarcerated at
Federal Medical Center prison in
Butner, N.C., records show. Bran-
don Sample, a lawyer for Mr.
Madoff, said: “Madoff, despite
what the government might
claim, is remorseful for his con-
duct.” The judge hasn’t ruled on
Mr. Madoff’s request.
—Corinne RameySENATERomney to Vote for
Biden Son SubpoenaSen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah)
said he would vote in favor of a
subpoena in a Senate panel’s
probe of former Vice President
Joe Biden’s son, likely giving Sen-ate Republicans the necessary
votes to deepen an investigation
into the family of a leading Dem-
ocratic presidential candidate.
Mr. Romney previously had wa-
vered on supporting the subpoena,
warning about launching a politi-
cally charged probe, but on Friday
a spokeswoman said he would
vote in favor of authorizing the
subpoena. “Sen. Romney has ex-
pressed his concerns to Chairman
(Ron) Johnson, who has confirmed
that any interview of the witness
would occur in a closed setting
without a hearing or public specta-
cle,” she said. Many Democrats
have excoriated the Senate GOP
probes, arguing they are baseless
attempts to smear Joe Biden.
—Andrew DuehrenTENNESSEETrump Surveys
Tornado DevastationPresident Trump on Friday
toured a neighborhood reduced
to rubble by a tornado earlier
this week and marveled at “the
tremendous heart” he witnessed.
Mr. Trump surveyed devas-
tated communities in Putnam
County, where a tornado tore a
2-mile-long path, killing 18 people.
Many more people were injured.
Statewide, the death toll stood
at 24 from a pair of storms.
Mr. Trump met with survivors
and volunteers at a local church
filled with boxes of supplies.
—Associated PressTHE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(USPS 664-880) (Eastern Edition ISSN 0099-9660)
(Central Edition ISSN 1092-0935) (Western Edition ISSN 0193-2241)
Editorial and publication headquarters:1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036
Published daily except Sundays and general legal holidays.
Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and other mailing offices.
Postmaster: Send address changes to The Wall Street Journal,
200 Burnett Rd., Chicopee, MA 01020.
All Advertising published in The Wall Street Journal is subject to the applicable rate card,
copies of which are available from the Advertising Services Department, Dow Jones & Co. Inc.,
1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036. The Journal reserves the right not to
accept an advertiser’s order. Only publication of an advertisement shall constitute final
acceptance of the advertiser’s order.
Letters to the Editor:Fax: 212-416-2891; email: [email protected]
Need assistance with your subscription?
By web: customercenter.wsj.com; By email: [email protected]
By phone: 1-800-JOURNAL (1-800-568-7625)
Reprints & licensing:
By email: [email protected]
By phone: 1-800-843-
WSJ back issues and framed pages:wsjshop.com
Our newspapers are 100% sourced from sustainably certified mills.GOT A TIP FOR US? SUBMIT IT AT WSJ.COM/TIPSknown as MCAS, from official
manuals. As the House commit-
tee revealed earlier, the com-
pany also went to great lengths
to keep FAA officials from scru-
tinizing and potentially recog-
nizing the hazards of the sys-
tem, even referring to it by
another name.
The FAA’s oversight effort
was “grossly insufficient
and...the FAA failed in its duty
to identify key safety prob-
lems,” according to the report.
The FAA said the agency
welcomes the scrutiny and the
lessons from the two crashes
would bolster aviation safety.
A Boeing spokesman said,
“We have cooperated exten-
sively for the past year with
the committee’s investigation;
we will review this preliminary
report.”
The report offered fresh in-
sight into Boeing’s actions after
the first crash in Indonesia.
The panel concluded that Boe-
ing continued to minimize the
importance of MCAS—and per-sisted in deflecting the need for
additional pilot training—even
in the wake of the Lion Air
crash in October 2018 and
stepped-up FAA assessments of
the system’s hazards.
Based on hundreds of thou-
sands of pages of internal doc-
uments and other material Boe-
ing turned over to the
committee, the report spells
out steps Boeing took to defend
itself in the weeks after the
Lion Air crash. At the time, the
report indicates, Boeing main-
tained that design changes that
had made MCAS more powerful
complied with all safety rules
and requirements.
Despite the Lion Air crash
and the public outcry it cre-
ated, Boeing sought to per-
suade the FAA to downgrade
training requirements on MAX
jets in general, according to
House investigators. Their re-
port says the effort by Boeing
came in the face of regulators’
warnings that the company’s
technical evaluation of the is-agement ranks, according to
the report, and resulted in vari-
ous efforts to mislead or with-
hold information from FAA of-
ficials during the lengthy
certification process.
Both crashes occurred after
pilots failed to counteract a
new automated flight-control
feature—details of which they
didn’t know—that misfired to
repeatedly and aggressively
push down the nose of their
aircraft.
The 13-page congressional
report offers new details about
what it described as Boeing’s
improper conduct related to
MAX, including fresh insight
into the period during the
plane’s development and in the
weeks after the first crash.
In July 2014, three years be-
fore the MAX started flying
passengers and two years be-
fore the FAA made a decision
regarding the extent of manda-
tory pilot training, the report
says Boeing issued a press re-
lease seemingly predetermining
the regulatory process. The
company said pilots already
flying earlier 737 models “will
not require a simulator course
to transition to the 737 MAX.”
According to the report, Boeing
made the same pledge to air-
liner customers, including Ethi-
opian Airlines.
During the plane’s develop-
ment, Boeing successfully ar-
gued to remove references to
the flight-control system,
Continued from Page One
new coronavirus outbreak.
Late in the month, signs
emerged that the virus could
effect other parts of the world.
In late January, the Centers
for Disease Control and Pre-
vention confirmed the first
U.S. case of the Covid-19 dis-
ease caused by the virus.
“The bottom line is
Covid-19 supply chain uncer-tainty could create demand
uncertainty as well,” Richard
Hayne, chief executive of
clothing company Urban Out-
fitters Inc., said Tuesday.
The outbreak may have ne-
gated effects from the U.S. and
China signing a mid-January
agreement that amounts to a
cease-fire in their two-year
trade war. The deal leavessome tariffs on Chinese goods
in place.
Also, January saw a halt in
U.S. production of Boeing Co.’s
troubled 737 MAX jetliner.
In the trade report for Jan-
uary, the U.S. deficit with
China narrowed to a season-
ally adjusted $23.67 billion,
largely because imports from
China into the U.S. fell sharply.exist, researchers can use ex-
amples such as the Diamond
Princess cruise ship, where
hundreds of passengers got
sick while on board.
“There were around 3,
passengers and 600 who
tested positive for the virus,”
Dr. Hay said. “Only half had
the symptoms. Some of
those asymptomatic people
might go on to develop
symptoms later. So the final
percentage of infections thatare asymptomatic will end
up a bit less than 50%.”
Among those who got
sick, six have died.
If the demographics of the
passengers and the way they
mingled aboard ship resem-
ble the general population,
their transmission patterns
could help experts estimate
the total number of asymp-
tomatic people.
“You know the full spec-
trum,” said Joseph Lewnard,THE NUMBERS|Jo Craven McGinty
How Many Are Infected With Coronavirus?
An unan-
swered ques-
tion about
Covid-19, the
illness caused
by the new
coronavirus, is how many
people with the disease are
circulating freely because
their infection hasn’t been
detected.
Around 90 countries have
confirmed more than 100,
cases of the virus, according
to Johns Hopkins University,
including more than 17,
outside mainland China,
where the disease originated
in the city of Wuhan.
But researchers at Harvard
and Imperial College London
estimate that, on average,
only one-third of the illnesses
exported from China have
been observed, a calculation
that is still likely to be in-
complete.
“It’s not accounting for
those who are asymptom-
atic,” said James Hay, a post-
doctoral research fellow at
Harvard T.H. Chan School of
Public Health. “The number
including those without
symptoms or with mild
symptoms is likely to be
higher than that.”
The estimate is based on
assessments of how many in-
fected people traveled to
other countries from Wuhan
before movement was re-
stricted.
“Let’s imagine a scenario,”
Dr. Hay said.
According to Dr. Hay, if
there was a 1% probability
that someone traveled from
Wuhan to Singapore, and
Singapore then detected five
cases of Covid-19, researchers
would expect other countries
with the same travel proba-
bility to import the same
number of cases. If they de-
tected fewer, it would suggest
they were underreporting.B
ecause Singapore his-
torically has very good
detection capabilities,
it can be used as a bench-
mark. But estimates like this
are based on confirmed
cases, which involve only the
sickest people.
“The asymptomatic frac-
tion is the big thing we usu-
ally don’t know,” said Chris-
topher N. Mores, a professor
at the Milken Institute
School of Public Health at
George Washington Univer-
sity.
Togetasenseofhow
many of these people mightan assistant professor of epi-
demiology at the Berkeley
School of Public Health. “The
proportion of who become
infected, the proportion of
who have symptoms and the
proportion who die.”I
n reality, the passengers
probably aren’t represen-
tative of the larger popu-
lation, and the conclusions
researchers have drawn from
their transmission statistics
are limited.
“All we know is there are
more cases than we’re see-
ing, and the number is a fair
bit larger,” Dr. Hay said.
Despite the uncertainty,
the estimates help research-
ers anticipate what sort of
health-care burden to expect,
including the potential num-
ber of fatalities. So far, the
virus has killed more than
3,400 people globally, includ-
ing12intheU.S.
“The number you see and
hear talked about is the case
fatality ratio,” Dr. Hay said.
“That’s the proportion of
people who are classified as
a case and who die. You get
2% to 4%, and it varies mas-
sively by age.”
Accounting for the total
number of infections couldsubstantially alter the ratio.
“What we really want to
know is the infection fatality
ratio,” Dr. Hay said. “If you
use only the number of peo-
ple who are quite sick and
who fit the restricted case
definition, it’s a small de-
nominator. If we had a better
idea of how many people as
a whole are infected, the de-
nominator would be higher,
and the infection fatality ra-
tio may be much lower.”
The Imperial College, ac-
counting for both symptom-
atic and asymptomatic cases,
has estimated the infection
fatality ratio to be approxi-
mately 1%.
At this stage, the re-
searchers caution that all
Covid-19 estimates should be
taken with a pinch of salt.
Imperial College warns that
its fatality ratio is based on
limited data. It’s unclear how
readily individuals with mild
or no symptoms infect others.
And international efforts to
identify, contain and treat
cases will, hopefully, curtail
the spread of the disease.
Like the virus, questions
about the escalation of
Covid-19 have proliferated.
But many of the answers are
yettocome.PercentageofcountriesaffectedbycoronavirusSource: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering; CIA World FactbookNote: As of 3 p.m. March 61000255075%Feb. MarchCountriesnotaffectedCountriesaffectedWASHINGTON—The U.S.
trade deficit narrowed in Jan-
uary as trade flows with the
rest of the world slowed dur-
ing a month when the corona-
virus’s impact became more
pronounced in China.
The foreign-trade gap in
goods and services contracted
6.7% from the prior month to a
seasonally adjusted $45.34 bil-
lion in January, the Commerce
Department said Friday.
Economists surveyed by
The Wall Street Journal had
expected a trade deficit of $
billion.
Imports decreased 1.6% in
January. Exports, meanwhile,
slid by 0.4% from December.
The decrease in imports re-
flected fewer purchases of in-
dustrial supplies, capital
equipment and autos. Mean-
while, U.S. firms shipped fewer
aircraft and less oil.
January presented a com-
plicated international trade
picture. The Lunar New Year
halted production in China, as
is typical, but those shut-
downs were extended as the
country sought to contain the
BYERICMORATH
ANDSARAHCHANEY
Trade Gap Narrowed in January
Imports decreased 1.6% in January, while exports slid by 0.4%, the Commerce Department said.LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG NEWSsue was at odds with the views
of FAA experts.
The Democratic-controlled
House committee intends to
continue its probe, but Rep. Pe-
ter DeFazio, the Oregon Demo-
crat who chairs the panel, sur-
prised some industry officials
and prompted blowback from
Republican members by opting
to release a preliminary report.
Coming days before the anni-
versary of the Ethiopian Air-
lines MAX crash in March 2019,
Democrats hope the material
will provide momentum for sig-
nificant legislative changes
tightening FAA oversight.
Rep. DeFazio sought to avoid
a partisan rupture during the
committee hearings. But hours
after the report came out, a
pair of senior GOP panel mem-
bers issued a rebuttal suggest-
ing its conclusions were prema-
ture and potentially biased. The
Republican statement said
other reviews of the FAA’s ap-
proval process for new aircraft
designs haven’t concluded the
“system is broken or in need of
wholesale dismantlement.”
Separately, in Boeing’s latest
reported production lapse, the
FAA on Friday proposed a $19.
million penalty against the
company for installing unap-
proved sensors on nearly 800
jetliners, including 173 of its
737 MAX models.
The alleged missteps, ex-
tending from mid-2015 to the
spring of 2019, highlight Boeing
failures to comply with its own
quality-control rules covering
aircraft production. The pro-
posed civil penalty also reflects
increased FAA scrutiny of Boe-
ing’s assembly-line safeguards.
A Boeing spokesman said
the company has done a thor-
ough internal review and im-
plemented changes to address
the FAA’s concerns.Boeing
Is Faulted
In Report
Boeing employees working on Boeing 737 MAX aircraft at a factory
in Renton, Wash., in March 2019.JASON REDMOND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESReaders can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by
[email protected] by calling 888-410-2667.CORRECTIONSAMPLIFICATIONS