A ‘black hole’ swallowing jobs and food supplies

The economic toll of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is mounting even faster than the case counts: Another 6.6 million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. That puts the total for the three weeks of widespread shutdowns above 16 million — almost twice the net job losses for the entire 2007-9 recession.

It’s as if “the economy as a whole has fallen into some sudden black hole,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. And there’s no telling yet when it will hit bottom.

Washington’s big stimulus measures have yet to deliver much relief on Main Street, where the pain is already acute, especially among the four in 10 Americans who were living check to check with little or no savings.

To see the evidence, look at the nation’s food banks.

Demand for food assistance is skyrocketing, just when the food banks are coming up short of both provisions and volunteers. Many of the restaurants and other organizations that typically donate food have shut down. Grocery stores have less unsold inventory to give because panic buying has stripped their shelves.

As a result, many food banks are burning through their budgets to buy food that they used to get for nothing — and in some places, turning to the National Guard for help distributing it.

Farm-to-compost: The pandemic is playing havoc with food producers, too, especially those who supplied restaurants, schools and resorts that have closed. Unsold crops are rotting in fields. Dairy farmers are having to dump milk. Meatpacking plants are shutting down because so many workers have gotten sick.

The crisis has hammered the farm-to-table movement, which channels the produce of local farms directly to restaurants and consumers. Losses could run as high as $689 million, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Hot spots

• A seven-square-mile patch of Queens has emerged as the “epicenter of the epicenter.” The area, home to many immigrants, has more than 7,200 cases; Manhattan, with nearly three times as many people, has about 10,800 cases.
• At least four U.S. aircraft carriers and France’s carrier now have confirmed or suspected cases among their crews. On the hardest hit so far, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, at least 286 sailors have tested positive, and one went into intensive care Thursday.
• India has 178 deaths and around 6,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday. That’s not very many in a nation of more than one billion people, many of whom live in dense slums; experts warn that a wider outbreak there could be calamitous.
• Vietnam reports four more new coronavirus cases on April 09, total hits 255 with no death

This article originally posted on the New York Times