ICYMI: Top takeaways from this week's "Face the Nation": Businesses crave practical solutions for recovery
States across the country are starting to implement their re-opening phases slowly but surely. But as local leaders weigh state's health vs. economic recovery -- federal guidance on returning back to normal appears lackluster.
Here's the big takeaways from Sunday's episode of "Face the Nation" with Margaret Brennan
1. Businesses need practical solutions for coronavirus relief
- American businessman Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC and ExpediaGroup, threw cold water on the possibility that the U.S. economy, which has been brought to a halt by the coronavirus pandemic, would rebound by the summer, saying there was "no chance" that would occur.
- What Diller said: "To anyone who thinks that this economy is going to bounce, I mean you'd have to have the idea of a rubber ball not in existence to think it's going to bounce high," Diller said Sunday on "Face the Nation." "It can't. The damage that's being done is catastrophic."
- So what should the federal government do: "Somebody is gonna have to say, yes, you must wear masks, period, or no, take your chances. But the chances are pretty good. There'll be a teething period where we'll kind of get used to this," Diller said, urging that health experts need to give clear advice to Americans who can then make their own risk calculations to re-engage in the economy.
- What can be done to save the travel industry? Diller, who is Chairman of ExpediaGroup, said some of the ideas being discussed in the travel industry are "absurd", saying social distancing practices in "these kind of arenas is a myth."
- "The idea that you can take the middle seat out of an airplane and have any kind of, quote, social distancing, is absurd. You can't. It does not work. Social distancing works when it's complete. Now, there are some things you can do when you're not in tight urban areas or in tight capsules like a plane, but that, you know, ensure some more safety. What I'd like to know is do masks work, giving it or getting it? Because if masks work and we're all ordered to wear them, that's at least something."
- Why that all matters: Despite Congress' push for aid to ailing small businesses, Diller predicts there will be "widespread bankruptcies" as an "enormous number of businesses" have no revenue coming in due to coronavirus' crippling impacts
"You're going to have a massive amount of businesses that can't return, businesses that go bankrupt. It's inevitable," he said. "And hopefully, the government will, so to speak, pick up the tab, because this is an existential crisis and we shouldn't worry so much about doing it in a neat way. It ought to be sloppy to get that money out to everybody who needs it."
To survive this all, Diller called for more government bailouts of industries. "And hopefully, the government will, so to speak, pick up the tab, because this is an existential crisis and we shouldn't worry so much about doing it in a neat way. It ought to be sloppy to get that money out to everybody who needs it"
2. As for testing and relief, States still need help
- "I'm not sure it should've been that difficult," Maryland Governor Larry Hogan says as President Trump directed governors to go out and get their own tests. To do so, he enlisted his Korean-speaking wife, First Lady Yumi Hogan "So we spent about a month with my wife's help, getting a half a million tests from South Korea, which was going to save thousands of lives in our state."
- What about the aid to states: "Nearly every governor in America supports it, both Republicans and Democrats," Governor Hogan says despite opposition from Republican lawmakers he does expect more federal aid for states.
- "I think we're making real progress. The president has committed several times to try to help the governors and the states in the- in the fourth stimulus package. Vice president has as well, Secretary Mnuchin. I know Senator McConnell is still somewhat reluctant, but there's a bipartisan bill in the Senate that the governors hope to get through with the help of the administration, because we're on the front lines, and we can't provide services to the people in our states and help us get out of this economic problem without that assistance," he added
- What about the infection rate: Deaths and infections in the DC Metro area, the seat of the federal government, are going up.
- "We have dramatically flattened and lengthened that curve and lowered the numbers. But unfortunately, that means- that means we're also a little bit behind, and now those numbers are coming up. We can't stop the virus, but we've at least up till now, stopped the overflow of our health care system, the overburdening of the ICU beds and ventilators and things like that," Hogan explained.
- Why this matters: While Mr. Trump's assertions that testing should be "local" has presented a particular strain on the state's response efforts, the Maryland governor acknowledged the White House has made progress on boosting the number of labs available and ramping up production of coronavirus tests.
"We should have more assistance from the federal government on testing," Hogan, who also chairs the National Governors Association, said. "I think we finally have driven that message home."
3. Experts caution against Trump's questionable medical advice
- Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb pushed back on the use of disinfectants to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Mr. Trump last week speculated about injecting disinfectants, though he walked back the remark, telling reporters Friday he was being sarcastic.
- What Gottlieb said: "Well, look, this is a constant concern that people do try disinfectants as agents. There is a perception out there sometimes among some people that they could be effective. There's no effective use of a disinfectant internally. And people need to be- we should be very clear about that. Nobody should be using a disinfectant as an ingested agent, injecting it, eating it, in any fashion. These are deadly agents. We see thousands of calls to poison control each year around people who consume, disinfect. And so we need to be very clear about this, that nobody should be consuming a disinfectant. And they don't work for the treatment of anything, let alone coronavirus."
- Govenor Hogan echoed Gottlieb, expressing concern over Trump's "mixed messages: "It's critical that the president of the United States, when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic, in these press conferences that we really get the facts out there, and unfortunately some of the messaging has not been great, the mixed messaging," Hogan said on "Face the Nation."
- Hogan explained that in the wake of Mr. Trump's comments about disinfectants, Maryland received "hundreds of calls" to its hotline. It's "hard to imagine that people thought that that was serious," he said. ""But what people actually were thinking about this was this something you could do to protect yourself?"
- What about hydroxychloroquine: "I don't think doctors should be using it outside of protocols at this point, given the fact that we've had now accruing evidence demonstrating really no benefit and some indication that it could be causing harm. I think it's still reasonable to conduct clinical studies with it to see if it could be effective as a treatment. But we've done a lot of clinical studies to date and nothing really- we haven't turned over a card that's really shown that the drug's effective," Gottlieb said. "I think a lot of doctors that I talked to in New York City is starting to pull back from using it right now, given the fact that they really haven't seen an indication that's having a robust treatment effect."
- Why that matters: There's a growing disparity between what the president believes to be sound advice for the American public as they continue to battle coronvirus and what medical experts say is reality. As Hogan told "Face the Nation", particularly during the middle of a pandemic, "it's always critically important for a leader to put out the facts and to be as open and honest and transparent as possible."
4. A quick return to "normal" for small business America appears unlikely
- "We're ready to go on Monday," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said of a new round of U.S. government-backed small business loans. Bank of America was allotted $50B worth of loans to allocate but not all will be funded. The first PPP plan was exhausted in 2 weeks with some larger firms getting loans before smaller ones. Moynihan said how that process was set up should change now.
- What Moynihan said: "We need to take away the first-come, first-served aspect of this to make sure it's fully funded because at the end of day it's going to where people want it. Small businesses, 25 percent in our case, of businesses in low and moderate-income neighborhoods, businesses with a small number of employees. And we just have to finish the funding and finish the work. And we have thousands of teammates that have been working the last three weeks to help with our hundreds of thousands of applications."
- Back to normal in 2021: "…our experts think it's late next year when the economy gets back to the same size it was prior to this. What we see in our consumer spending is kind of interesting, and it reflects this question of unemployment and cash flow in a household, because so far the spending by our consumers, if you took from January to- to- to this week, it's actually flat to last year. But obviously, it's a tale of two pieces of time. First, it was plus 10 and then it went down about 25 percent. And it's leveled off there. So the month of April is down about 20, 25 percent, but it's leveled off. And it's starting now to grow in certain areas, especially as you see it kind of hit bottom. So one of your earlier guests is in the entertainment business. That's still very far down. But other businesses are starting to come on. After the first round of provision buying, which was a flood of activity, you're now seeing that level out. That actually provides some hope that as the economy opens up in pieces, and safely, you'll see that consumer spending continue to grow, which will help fuel the U.S. economy."
- Why this all matters: While the president has pushed a return to business as usual for the U.S. economy, top financial officials are stressing to the public that normal may look dramatically different and take more time than first believed.
Missed Sunday's episode? Click here to watch the show. "Face the Nation" airs Sunday mornings on CBS. Click here for local listings.
