Task: Sentence Composition
Input (English): In late March 2020, controversy erupted when U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that, despite a deadly COVID-19 pandemic with a rising death toll, Americans should end social-distancing measures and return to work by Easter in order to avert further harm to the economy. Trump’s suggestion flew in the face of the recommendations by health experts, as well as a number of locally-mandated social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. It also raised fears that encouraging people to go back to work before the disease was contained amounted to putting a price on human life. But Trump staffers, supporters, right-wing media personalities, and the president himself all expressed concern that shutting down the economy could be a cure worse than the disease. Amid this debate, national politics and financial news outlet Bloomberg published an article headlined, “Billionaires Want People Back to Work. Employees Aren’t So Sure.” The story contrasted the fears expressed by one front-line service worker worried about contracting COVID-19 against comments by wealthy business leaders who worried about further damage to the economy if lockdowns persisted. Former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich was quoted as one of the latter. Kovacevich, who was CEO of Wells Fargo until 2007 and chairman until 2009, was quoted in the article as saying: We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know. Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose. The statement resulted in considerable blowback. And subsequent headlines didn’t help matters for Kovacevich: “‘Some may even die, I don’t know’: Former Wells Fargo CEO wants people to go back to work and ‘see what happens,'” read one from Business Insider. In a followup interview with CNBC two days later, Kovacevich said he felt the remark wasn’t placed within the the proper context in the Bloomberg article. Kovacevich explained that he meant people should start returning to work after various regions in the U.S. had succeeded in “flattening the curve,” meaning when a steep increase of COVID-19 cases had leveled out to more manageable numbers. He gave examples of China, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, which he claimed had succeeded in doing so and commenced restarting their economies after about a month on lockdown. Here are Kovacevich’s comments on CNBC in full:
Output (English): In regards to reopening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the former CEO of Wells Fargo stated, "We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know.