It’s a Thursday morning in San Francisco, the day after the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and Ronald Silva hasn’t slept for days, “if not a week”, he says.

Silva is the president and CEO of private-equity firm Fillmore Capital Partners and chair of the board of the nursing-home chain Golden Living Centers. He’s been up early calling his managers and nurses, he says, “cheering them on”. His facilities still don’t have Covid-19 testing kits, he says, but they have been screening vendors and staff for signs of infection. And the company is trying to boost nurses’ morale during the outbreak, he says, by having T-shirts made for them, emblazoned with the slogan “The Bitches Ride at Dawn”.