Appeals for help and chilling predictions of imminent disaster are coming thick and fast. The world is on red alert in a way few people alive today have experienced. Yet, despite the urgent clamour, the international response to the coronavirus catastrophe is lacking, leaderless and late.

Lacking in the sense that the scale of the problem, especially in developing countries, is so huge as to be almost numbing. Oxfam says more than half a billion people may be pushed into poverty by the economic fallout. Global poverty reduction could be set back 30 years.

Food companies, farmers and civil society groups are pointing to a rising tide of hunger unless food supply chains are maintained and borders kept open to trade. Coordinated action by governments is necessary “to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic turning into a global food and humanitarian crisis”, they say.

Already creaking health systems in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia face collapse. “Covid-19 is poised to tear through poor, displaced and conflict-affected communities around the world,” Samantha Power, a former US ambassador who helped build a coalition to combat the Ebola epidemic in 2014, warned last week.

“Three billion people are unable to wash their hands at home, making it impossible to follow sanitation protocols,” she wrote. “Because clinics in these communities have few or no gloves, masks, coronavirus tests, ventilators or ability to isolate patients, the contagion will be exponentially more lethal than in developed countries.”

David Miliband’s International Rescue Committee says it is a double emergency. First, there is the direct impact “on unprepared health systems and populations with pre-existing vulnerabilities”. Then there is the “secondary havoc” that will be caused to fragile states’ economies and political systems....

I would say without question it’s the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make,” Donald Trump said on Friday, contemplating when and how he will relax physical distancing guidelines and reopen the American economy.

In one ear, he has medical experts pleading caution. In the other, Fox News urges the opposite.

The conservative TV network has been widely condemned for downplaying the threat of Covid-19 even as it took measures to protect its own staff. And with the projected death toll poised to avoid the worst-case scenario, some hosts are resuming their gung-ho attitude.

“At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs Fauci and Birx and say, we’re opening on May 1,” Laura Ingraham tweeted this week. “Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.”

Tomi Lahren, a host on Fox Nation, added bluntly: “It’s time to start the reopen of America.”

The symbiotic relationship between the Trump administration and Fox News has long been chronicled. Ideas and personnel move back and forth. The president is a regular interviewee and the host Sean Hannity once spoke at a Trump rally.

Indeed, on some occasions Fox News echoes, amplifies and refines Trump’s message, while on others the president takes his cue from its programming.

Sean Spicer, a host on the conservative Newsmax channel and former Trump White House press secretary, said: “There’s no question about it that he watches a lot of Fox and you can tell by the tweets and the comments and his actions. He’ll tweet out, ‘I just saw on Fox and Friends’ or ‘Hannity segment tonight’. I don’t think that’s a debatable point. I don’t think the White House would debate that. I hope not.”

But when the coronavirus outbreak began, the stakes rose. While Fox News reporters did cover it, some opinion hosts rhymed with Trump in comparing it to flu and accusing liberals of whipping up hysteria. On 3 March, Jesse Watters, a co-host of The Five, boasted: “You want to know how I really feel about the coronavirus, Juan? If I get it, I’ll beat it … I’m not afraid of the coronavirus and no one else should be that afraid either.”...

The federal government is struggling to deliver financial aid to faltering employers — and workers are suffering the consequences. Roughly 10 percent of American workers filed for unemployment benefits in the past three weeks, a wave of job losses that has no precedent in modern American history. Millions more are struggling to submit unemployment claims to overwhelmed state agencies. And still more face the loss of their jobs in the coming weeks.

The scale of the economic damage is breathtaking. In one recent poll, more than half of all Americans under the age of 45 said that they had lost their jobs or suffered a loss of hours.

Some businesses may survive the crisis by shedding workers now, but they face long-term costs, too: the loss of trained and experienced workers, the uncertainties of hiring new ones.

The federal government was slow to react to the pandemic. Local officials began ordering businesses to shut down weeks before Congress moved to provide those businesses with the lifeline they so obviously needed. Timely action by itself could have saved millions of jobs.

When Congress did act, it failed to grasp the magnitude of the crisis. The aid bill passed at the end of March allocated $349 billion to support small businesses despite warnings from experts that the government needed to provide two or three times as much money to limit job losses. Already Congress is considering $250 billion more in spending, which still is insufficient.

And on top of all that, the aid program is poorly designed. The Small Business Administration, tapped to oversee the program, manages a loan portfolio of about $120 billion in normal times. Unsurprisingly, the agency has been overwhelmed by the expansion of its responsibilities. Congress also erred in relying on banks to make the loans. Crisis lending requires a degree of imprudence — the goal is to get money out the door. Banks, on the other hand, are legally required to exercise caution. The result: Banks quickly started imposing new conditions, such as refusing to deal with new customers, leaving many businesses bewildered, frustrated — and unable to get the money they desperately need.

It’s not too late for Congress to take a different approach to limit the damage. What’s needed is a blank-check promise to provide the money necessary for employers to pay workers.

European nations, including France, Germany and Britain, are fighting mass unemployment by paying companies to hold on to their employees. The government gives money to the companies, which give it to the workers; the workers stay home and get paid.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, has proposed an American version. Under his plan, the government would pay up to 80 percent of payroll costs for each employee up to the median wage — which the Social Security Administration pegged at $32,828 in 2018....

From his guidance rolling back paid leave benefits to his attempt to limit who qualifies for beefed up unemployment insurance, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia's implementation of the multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus package is coming under fire from Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups who say the former corporate lawyer's handling of the new law favors businesses over people in desperate need of assistance.

Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, "has used his department's authority over new laws enacted by Congress to limit who qualifies for joblessness assistance and to make it easier for small businesses not to pay family leave benefits," the Washington Post reported Friday.

In a tweet late Friday, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) pointed to the unprecedented surge in jobless claims over the past month and ripped Scalia's "despicable" management of the CARES Act, which temporarily expands relief for the unemployed.

"Because of COVID-19, more than 16 million Americans have submitted unemployment claims in the past three weeks, but Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is using his authority to limit who qualifies for assistance," Cohen wrote. "This is despicable. We are in the midst of a pandemic!"

While criticizing the stimulus package—which President Donald Trump signed into law late last month—as far too business-friendly overall, progressives have cautiously applauded the law's across-the-board expansion of unemployment benefits by $600 for a period of four months.

But lawmakers have voiced alarm at the Labor Department's lack of urgency in rolling out the benefits and, as the Post reported, Scalia issued guidance earlier this week that aims to "make it more difficult for gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers to get benefits."...

As Italy struggles to pull its economy through the coronavirus crisis, the Mafia is gaining local support by distributing free food to poor families in quarantine who have run out of cash, authorities have warned.

In recent weeks, videos have surfaced of known Mafia gangs delivering essential goods to Italians hit hard by the coronavirus emergency across the poorest southern regions of Campania, Calabria, Sicily and Puglia, as tensions rise across the country.

“For over a month, shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs have been closed,” Nicola Gratteri, antimafia investigator and head of the prosecutor’s office in Catanzaro, told the Guardian. “Millions of people work in the grey economy, which means that they haven’t received any income in more than a month and have no idea when they might return to work. The government is issuing so-called shopping vouchers to support people. If the state doesn’t step in soon to help these families, the mafia will provide its services, imposing their control over people’s lives.”

The ramifications of the lockdown in Italy are affecting the estimated 3.3 million people in Italy who work off the books. Of those, more than 1 million live in the south, according to the most recent figures from CGIA Mestre, a Venice-based small business association. There have been reports of small shop owners being pressured to give food for free, while police are patrolling supermarkets in some areas to stop thefts. Videos of people in Sicily protesting against the government’s stalled response, or people beating their fists outside banks in Bari for a €50 (£44) loan are going viral and throwing fuel on the crisis; a fire the mafia is more than willing to stoke....