Record-breaking infection rates, more economic fallout and Biden’s plan to deal with it.
Good morning from the coronavirus time warp, where case numbers go in the wrong direction at a record clip and testing falls short yet again. But at least we have Storm King back! (And Disney World, yikes.) Here’s what you need to know for the week ahead in business and tech news.
The United States has spent the past two weeks breaking records for new coronavirus cases, mostly driven by Southern states that lifted their lockdown rules the quickest (and have now paused or reversed those plans). Death rates are also rising again. It’s a bleak sign that the country is a long way from controlling the virus, let alone recovering from it economically. And the consequences are already looking dire. Airlines warned this past week that they could lay off or furlough tens of thousands of employees in October, despite billions of dollars in government aid, because air travel isn’t picking up anytime soon. And Wells Fargo, the largest employer among American banks, is preparing to cut thousands of jobs later this year, too.
In the past few weeks, Facebook has grappled with an advertiser boycott over its treatment of hate speech, an employee protest over how it handled inflammatory posts by President Trump and a disastrous civil-rights audit (by people the company handpicked!) that found the platform’s algorithms and policies at fault for deepening social divisions, spreading misinformation, aiding election interference and fueling harassment of marginalized groups. The company’s two top executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, tried to do damage control by meeting with civil rights leaders on Tuesday and promising to take steps to “keep hate off of our platform.
