The savings must be appealing to a Chinese consumer, but I'm not sure if the savings is worth the effort of reselling and shipping them overseas. I suppose if someone does it at scale, maybe there is money to be made, but some government organization will catch on and crack down on them if it reaches this point. Also, phones sold outside of North America are different models with different cellular bands enabled/disabled, so you may be using a half-baked phone in the US if you were to buy one of these phones.
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With all due respect, you're out of touch with reality. While at present, more folks are employed than unemployed as a result of COVID-19, that's a worsening situation each day. In the US, as of March 21 (18 days ago), over 3 million folks applied for unemployment. Internationally, studies estimate the job loss will be to the tune of 200 million.
With respect to stimulus, no one has actually received a check yet, and some folks will have to wait well into summer to receive theirs. Lots of folks don't even qualify. If you do the simple math, you must realize that someone who has been unemployed since mid March, and receives no check until mid April (best case scenario), isn't rushing out to buy unnecessary goods. They're trying to put food on the table for their family, or pay bills that they're already late on. They aren't going to have ample funds and therefore no "pent up demand to spend". Their last thought is upgrading to a new iPhone, even if their iPhone 6 is on its last legs.
The spread will hopefully be contained sooner than later, but expect additional waves of intense social distancing (like we're going through now) as soon as there is another outbreak. Most states are modeling social distancing requirements until June, which is substantially beyond early May. Until there is a vaccine, our new normal will look a lot more like what life is now, versus what is was before. And for these reasons, the economy will continue to hemorrhage meaning additional job losses.
