fortune--2020-03-13--5 great weekend reads to help you calm your anxious brain

It’s a quiet day in dealmaking land as the nation grapples with the uncertainty of what the coronavirus may bring.
Experts caution against reading about the outbreak obsessively. “Constantly checking for updates on the numbers who have been infected and died can just fuel anxiety,” Gary LeRoy, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told The Wall Street Journal.
It’s crucial to stay up to date. But since it’s Friday, I’d like to bring you some interesting reads in case you need to take a mental break and learn something new.
Here we go:
— How Shaq’s investments in Google, Lyft, and Ring Created a New Class of Venture Capitalists / Vanity Fair: Thanks to his fame and a chance babysitting gig, Shaquille O’Neal built a portfolio of world-class start-ups, including Vitaminwater, Ring, Google, and Lyft. Of Google, he says, “My only regret is that I wish I would have bought more.” Read more.
— Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet / WIRED: Everyone loves Wikipedia. In its 19 years of existence, Wikipedia has successfully avoided the privacy scandals and the advertising outrage. As a not-for-profit, it is the closest thing we have to an online public square. As the story notes, “A free encyclopedia encompassing the whole of human knowledge, written almost entirely by unpaid volunteers: Can you believe that was the one that worked?” Read more.
— Adam Ondra’s Race to the Top / The New York Times: Adam Ondra is probably the best indoor climber in the world, probably the best outdoor climber in the world, and certainly the best combination of the two. Now, for the first time ever, a climbing event will debut in the Olympics … but it’s speed climbing, which Ondra hates. He’s about strategy, not speed. And as soon as the Olympics are over, he vows to never do the speed wall again. But first he has to get there. Read more.
— Laurene Powell Jobs Is Putting Her Own Dent in the Universe / The New York Times: In the nine years since the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs, his widow Laurene Powell Jobs has kept a low-profile. But now, she’s stepping off the sidelines and jumping into some of the most contentious political fights of our time — immigration, education, and press independence. As the 35th-richest person in the world who is worth $27.5 billion, her efforts against wealth inequality may seem disingenuous. But, she says, “I’ve dedicated my life to doing the very best I can to distribute [my wealth] effectively.” Read more.
— The NFL coach searching for his family / ESPN: Even though this article is from 2018, it’s one of my favorite stories ever. It will leave you in shock. Here’s a quick overview: At 44 years old, Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough went searching for his biological parents. What he found out will stop you in your tracks & make you realize life is just a series of weird coincidences. Read more.
Stay safe, and have a great weekend.
Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Confluent, a Mountain View, Calif.-based real-time event streaming platform, will raise between $200 million and $300 million in funding at a roughly $5 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg. Read more.
- Ride Report, a Portland, Ore.-based micro-mobility management tool that helps cities around the world manage their bike and scooter share programs, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Unusual Ventures led the round.
- UrbanLeap, a San Francisco-based developer of a marketplace and discovery solution that connects governments with tech companies, raised $4.2 million in seed funding. StageOne Ventures led the round.
- Influence.co, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based developer of an online platform for influencers, brands, marketers, talent managers, raised $3 million in seed funding. Bonfire Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including ACT Capital Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Next 10 Ventures, and Singapore Press Holdings Ventures.
- Case Status, a Birmingham, Ala.-based client relationship management and marketing platform for law firms, raised $1.5 million in seed II funding funding of $1.5 million from BIP Capital.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- NinjaRMM, a San Francisco-based remote monitoring and endpoint management solution, raised funding of an undisclosed amount from Summit Partners.
- Charter Health Care Group, a portfolio company of Pharos Capital Group, acquired two hospice service providers, St. Luke’s Home Hospice and Arizona Select Hospice. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Epic Games will buy Cubic Motion, a U.K.-based computer vision startup. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Cubic Motion had raised approximately 20 million pounds ($25 million) in funding from investors including NorthEdge Capital.


fortune--2020-03-13--U.S. stocks jump 6% after worst drop since Black Monday

Google is developing a coronavirus testing website for the U.S .

U.S. stocks rebounded from the worst day since 1987 amid signs policy makers around the world are taking action to stave off the economic fallout from the coronavirus. Oil jumped.
The S&P 500 surged 5.6% at the open after plunging 9.5% Thursday in the biggest rout since 1987 and fifth worst on record. European equities jumped 7%, the dollar surged and stress in the credit markets showed some signs of easing.
After days of no or inadequate action, policy prescriptions came fast Friday, with reports Congress is near a deal on a spending bill. The European Union prepared to suspend government spending rules and regulators in Italy and Spain banned short-selling on some stocks. China’s central bank said it would pump in $79 billion to bolster the economy.
The moves buoyed market sentiment battered by the spread of the virus and a spate of travel restrictions, school closings and event cancellations. But bears cautioned that the rebound was preordained and may not stick.
After each of the 10 worst days in S&P 500 history, the average return has been a gain of 2.94%. The Cboe Volatility Index dropped after its fourth-highest close on record. Such spikes in the VIX have always been followed by sharp rallies.
Other markets remained exceptionally volatile. Ten-year Treasuries swung from earlier gains to losses. Sovereign bonds sank across most of Europe for a second day amid criticism of European Central Bank measures to address the pandemic. Oil pushed higher and the dollar headed for its best week since 2016.
“It’s possible we’re just recovering a portion of yesterday’s losses on the idea that there were no terrible headlines this morning,” said Susquehanna Financial Group strategist Christopher Jacobsen. “The market had priced in the extreme dour outcome and the lack of newsflow this morning to confirm that worst-case scenario resulted in just a bit of a relief rally.”
Even with Friday’s gains, global equities are heading for their worst week since 2008 as investors price in a severely weaker economic outlook. They’re doubting the efficacy of policy responses as cases continue to grow across the world and restrictions on people and businesses crush sentiment. The Bank of Japan on Friday followed an earlier move from the Federal Reserve to inject liquidity.
“It seems that the more severe things become in the short term, the more extreme will be the fiscal and monetary policy response,” Mark Dowding, chief investment officer at BlueBay Asset Management, wrote to investors. “It is very conceivable that the full boost from such measures will only really kick in just as activity rebounds, with pent up demand leading to a turbo-charged recovery in the second half of the year in the wake of an economic contraction in the context of the first half.”
These are the main moves in markets:
Stocks
The S&P 500 Index jumped 6% as of 9:31 a.m. in New York.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index soared 6.6%.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dipped 2.2%.
The MSCI All-Country World Index climbed 1.2%.
Currencies
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index increased 0.4%.
The euro decreased 0.3% to $1.1149.
The British pound declined 0.7% to $1.2484.
The Japanese yen weakened 2.5% to 107.28 per dollar.
The Mexican peso strengthened 2.5% to 21.403 per dollar.
Bonds
The yield on 10-year Treasuries gained 13 basis points to 0.93%.
The yield on two-year Treasuries climbed two basis points to 0.50%.
Germany’s 10-year yield jumped 16 basis points to -0.58%.
Japan’s 10-year yield increased 11 basis points to 0.054%.
Commodities
West Texas Intermediate crude rose 6.6% to $33.57 a barrel.
Iron ore was unchanged at $88.20 per metric ton.
Gold strengthened 0.6% to $1,586.14 an ounce.
LME zinc climbed 3.4% to $2,004 per metric ton.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Is this your first stock market crash? Some advice for young investors
—Here are two of the biggest losers from the Saudi Arabia oil price war
—Why investors suddenly turned on pot stocks
—Here are some of the most extreme ways companies are combating coronavirus
—Why it’s so hard to find the next Warby Parker
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-03-13--Trump administration awarding two companies $1.3M for fast COVID-19 tests

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.
President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday it is awarding $1.3 million to two companies trying to develop rapid COVID-19 tests that could detect whether a person is positive for the new coronavirus within an hour.
The Department of Health and Human Services said it is awarding $679,000 to DiaSorin Molecular, of Cypress, California, and $598,000 to QIAGEN, of Germantown, Maryland, to accelerate development of their tests.
DiaSorin’s test could be ready within six weeks for consideration by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the QIAGEN test could be ready within 12 weeks for FDA consideration, according to HHS.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover from the new virus.
According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, about 81,000 people have been diagnosed and about 64,000 have recovered.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How coronavirus is affecting the global concert industry
—Politicians around the world are going into quarantine
—Some of the most extreme ways companies are combating coronavirus
—How Europe is adapting to the coronavirus outbreak
—What Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan says about China’s coronavirus recovery
—Conferences go online amid coronavirus fears—minus the hallway schmoozing
—Coronavirus may not be all bad for tech. Consider the “stay at home” stocks
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-13--What it’s like working for Elon Musk

What it’s like working for Elon Musk

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
A few weeks ago, when the craziest thing to discuss was the insanely rich valuation of shares of the techno-automotive company Tesla, a document circulated on the web purporting to be the company’s employee handbook. I had glanced at the manual, naughtily titled “The Anti-Handbook Handbook,” at the time, thought about how much I admire Tesla’s approach, and set it aside.
Now that the world is falling apart in front of our eyes—Tesla’s shares, off 12% Thursday and down 42% from their high—I thought it’d be fruitful to revisit the quirky company’s rules.
Tesla prides itself on being “a high tech company unlike any other high tech company” and a “car company unlike any other car company.” That’s true enough. It competes against some of the most bureaucratic companies in the world, which is one reason is encourages its employees to thumb their noses at hierarchy. “Anyone at Tesla can and should email or talk to anyone else according to what they think the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company,” says the handbook. This explicitly includes Elon Musk. Apple was the same for a while, with many employees having a direct line to Steve Jobs. This is smart—if the company can really pull it off.
Tesla wants its employees to figure out what’s expected of them. “‘No one told me’ is an excuse that will never fly here,” it says. It also doesn’t want employees sitting around waiting for a formal review—”Talk to your supervisor for feedback.”—or to have unexplained absences: “Be the kind of person your team can rely on.”
Elon Musk’s company explicitly allows moonlighting, presumably the result of the boss’ extracurricular activities. “You may hold a job with another company as long as you perform your job here well and you aren’t compromising anything confidential or proprietary.” Repeatedly, Tesla tells its employees if they don’t live up to the company’s standards, they’ll be fired. But the standards allow for plenty of unusual flexibility.
Too few companies address the subject of fun head on. Not Tesla. “We want you to work hard, love what you do, and have fun,” the company writes.
As the business world shifts to work from home policies because of the coronavirus outbreak, many of us will discover the hard way how much we love our jobs and being around our colleagues. It’s instructive to read about the odd but charming ways of one unique Silicon Valley company.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Beep, beep. Big telecommunications companies say there has been no surge in Internet traffic—at least so far—countering concerns that employees and students forced to work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak would cause online gridlock. AT&T said its network "continues to perform well." Verizon said it had not seen a "measurable increase in data usage" since the outbreak. But it's early days. In Italy, Internet traffic has surged 70% during the day, Telecom Italia says. A big factor? Kids playing Fortnite.
Clickity, clack. Speaking of, ahem, working at home, Google says its G-Suite online productivity suite hit 2 billion monthly active users.
Drip, drop. Artificial intelligence startup Neural Magic sued Facebook last week, claiming that a former employee, Aleksandar Zlateski, stole trade secrets when he joined the social networking giant in July 2019.
Whoosh. The Pentagon will formally reconsider awarding Microsoft the $10 billion contract for its cloud computing project, known as JEDI. Amazon had sued over the selection, saying President Trump interfered in the process. Last month, Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith ruled that the Pentagon had incorrectly assessed pricing in the bids.
Toot, toot. On Wall Street, after all the plunging stocks finished plunging, Slack, Adobe, and Oracle managed to report quarterly results. Slack, sometimes considered a beneficiary of the current work-from-home rush, saw revenue jump 49% to $182 million. That wasn't good enough, and its stock dropped 5% in pre-market trading on Friday. Adobe's revenue rose 19% to $3.1 billion, but warned that COVID-19 might dampen future quarters. Its shares gained 7% on Friday morning. Slowest growing of all, Oracle said revenue grew 2% to $9.8 billion. Its shares jumped 8% on Friday.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many companies to ask employees to work from home. It's a trend that was growing, albeit much more slowly, well before the outbreak. Tech writer Will Oremus has been working from home himself for a while and has an essay in One Zero about the implications for society of a more home-bound workforce.
Once coronavirus has forced companies and workers to figure out how to function without an office, office space will start to look more like a luxury on the corporate balance sheet — something that’s nice to have, but which can be cut if needed. When companies realize how much business travel they can do without, they’ll be tempted to slash those budgets as well.
After coronavirus, “We’ll never probably be the same,” Twitter’s head of human resources told BuzzFeed News. “People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way. Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few long reads that I came across this week:
Inside the Bizarre, Boozy World of a Junior VC in Silicon Valley (Marker)
Welcome to an industry filled with 21-year-olds, open bars, and very little business experience.
‘Space Jam’ Forever: The Website That Wouldn’t Die (Rolling Stone)
How a ragtag group of young coders skirted the studio and created a pop culture sensation that’s still standing two decades later.
Tea Boy to Tattooed Trader: A Secret Tipster’s Life and Death (Bloomberg)
James Harris was plugged into a network that included insider traders and operated on two continents.
We’re in the Middle of a Sports-Bra Revolution (Outside)
Technological advances and a growing line of research have paved the way for a new class of support systems that are comfortable, look good, and fit a wide(r) variety of bodies.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The economy’s hurting. What does that mean for startups who plan to go public in 2020? By Polina Marinova
Amazon tells employees to work from home if they can. Warehouse workers can’t By Jonathan Vanian
Verizon, AT&T spend the most at latest 5G airwave auction By Aaron Pressman
Bitcoin bloodbath: What people are saying about the crypto collapse By Jeff John Roberts
Coursera offers free online courses to universities worldwide during coronavirus pandemic By David Z. Morris
7 ways to make working from home easier during the coronavirus pandemic By Chris Morris
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
As we practice more social distancing and working from home, don't forget to clean that great portable germ collector in your pocket: your smartphone. There are plenty of lists out there now with recommendations, but I favor Wall Street Journal tech columnist Joanna Stern's educational and yet hilarious video. Turns out, our phones are less fragile than we thought. Stay healthy and safe and have a good weekend.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-03-13--A record backlog, antiquated technology, and new quotas: Inside San Francisco’s chaotic immigration

A record backlog, antiquated technology, and new quotas: Inside San Francisco’s chaotic immigration court

On the fourth floor of a federal building among the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco, Judge Patrick O’Brien’s courtroom is in session, and it is surprisingly subdued for one of the busiest immigration courts in the nation.
“We don’t normally sit around waiting like this. You should’ve seen this courtroom yesterday. There were 60 people in here,” O’Brien says, gesturing to the six benches in the gallery, which fit 30 people comfortably.
Early in 2020, the immigration case backlog eclipsed 1 million, and the San Francisco court handles the second-largest load in the country, roughly 70,000 cases. The backlog quadrupled in the past decade, accelerating under President Donald Trump with a record 443,000 new cases in fiscal year 2019, in large part because of a surge in asylum filings. Court administrators, judges, and lawyers are stretched at every seam, and moments of calm are rare these days.
The immigration courts run like no other U.S. justice system, with judges afforded less autonomy, and fewer protections for those appearing before the court. Judges face new performance metrics, and the professionals who work in the courts, from federal attorneys to translators to immigrant-support networks, are feeling the strain.
O’Brien is waiting for all of the parties to show. The translator is here, the government’s attorney is present, and the immigrant from Guatemala, in navy blue prison garb, stares hopefully into a TV monitor from 300 miles away at the Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Bakersfield. The detainee’s lawyer is nowhere to be found and not answering phone calls. Eventually, O’Brien postpones the bond hearing, pushing back the detainee’s shot at release. An hour and a half after the scheduled time, the lawyer walks into the courthouse lobby, befuddled. He was sent a hearing notice with the wrong time, which he shows the clerk. No one can explain the mixup.
It is precious time wasted, but it’s not uncommon amid the bureaucratic morass plaguing the courts as they scramble to manage the withering case load. During the week of Feb. 10, Fortune observed several sessions of San Francisco’s immigration court to chronicle day-to-day life under the record backlog.
Pressure-cooker courts
Judge Elizabeth Young kicks off her morning session in a non-detainee courtroom with a disclaimer. Her calendar is booked for months, and most of the people appearing today will not come back again until September.
The whole docket for the morning is family unit (FAMU) cases, and the administration has mandated completion in one year. The immigration courts are not part of the independent judiciary but rather operate under the Department of Justice and its Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR).
“I don’t know why they keep giving me cases,” Young says with a sigh to no one in particular as the hearing starts. She handles many of the San Francisco court’s juvenile and family unit cases, which are filling up the docket, and she spends more time solving her calendar jigsaw puzzle than the other judges.
In San Francisco, an immigration case takes an average of 717 days, making a one-year deadline a sprint to the finish. People with low-priority cases will not see the judge again until 2022. In the most bogged-down courts like Seattle, Boston, and Newark, the average is more than 900 days, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
“The judges are overworked, and it keeps getting worse as the backlog exceeds 1 million,” immigration attorney Jennifer Burk says. “The quota is clearly weighing on judges, as they’re required to process a certain number of cases or face disciplinary action.”
There are children everywhere—sucking on lollipops, playing with toy cars, and clutching Batman backpacks. A 1-year-old girl in pigtails appears before the judge asleep, cradled in her father’s arms. Many of the families are waiting for their “reasonable fear interview,” a review of the circumstances they are fleeing in their home country. A positive result offers protection from deportation, but no one appearing today has been scheduled.
“The family unit dockets are really troublesome,” says San Francisco immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks, who has been on the bench for 33 years and spoke in her role as president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
“A year is not a lot of time, not when you have people trying to find lawyers, especially low-fee or pro bono attorneys,” she says. “At the same time we are seeing many more families applying for asylum, and the cases are at the cutting edge of asylum law.”
The DOJ has mandated that judges complete 700 decisions annually, but resources for adjudication have not kept pace with allocations for enforcement. From 2003 to 2018, the combined budget for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection offices increased 160% to more than $24 billion, while EOIR’s budget has risen 120% to $437 million.
“They are micromanaging judges in terms of the time frame to get things done,” Marks says. “We’ve never been subjected to numeric or time-based appraisals in the past. It pits the judge’s interests against the people appearing before them.”
EOIR is adding staff, including interpreters, judges, and clerks, new centers for video hearings, and an electronic system to manage the mountains of paper files, EOIR assistant press secretary Kathryn Mattingly says in an email. Case completions have grown three years in a row, with more than 275,000 cases decided in fiscal year 2019, the second-highest total ever and 80,000 more than in 2018.
“EOIR’s caseloads are tied directly to Department of Homeland Security enforcement and detention activities,” Mattingly says. “While EOIR is doing an unprecedented job adjudicating cases fairly and expeditiously, the nearly 1 million case backlog will continue to grow unless Congress acts to address the crisis at the border.”
Meanwhile, double the number of immigration judges resigned or retired in 2019 than in 2017 or 2018. The lack of experience on the bench means more time spent on motions and procedures, as the robed rookies find their footing.
“The turnover in the last two years has been incredible. There are judges now that do not know immigration law,” says Marie Vincent, an attorney and codirector at Pangea Legal Services.
The situation has boiled over into a feud between the judge’s union, which seeks independence, and the Justice Department, which is attempting to decertify the union and wrest more control of the courts. A decision is expected in May.
‘No due process’
In Judge Kelly Lake’s courtroom, she has no choice but to go into assembly-line mode. She has a mixed docket of juveniles and adults in for preliminary hearings, and nearly all of them are still searching for a lawyer, which right that is not guaranteed in immigration court.
She gathers 15 Spanish speakers together, gives instructions to the group through a court interpreter, then addresses each one individually for a few minutes. They all get a white sheet of paper, a list of a dozen low-cost and pro bono attorneys organizations, mostly in the Bay Area.
“We’re looking,” Cristian, Jose, and Jonathan Gaitan, three brothers all under 18 who live 200 miles away in Fresno, tell the judge. Some law students temporarily worked on their asylum case but are no longer available, Cristian says. “No one returns our calls.”
Lake eventually calls a father and son from Guatemala who speak the indigenous language, Mam. The courts are struggling to find services for the growing range of languages encountered. She tries two different dial-in translation services, but no one is available. They are handed the same list and told to return in May with a lawyer.
“The low-cost and pro bono legal services are stretched too thin, and most service providers, including Pangea, are already getting more calls than we can handle,” Vincent says. “It’s extremely difficult for an immigrant to find a lawyer from the list the court hands out.”
A little more than a third of all immigrants and 14% of detainees have a lawyer by their side in court, according to a 2016 American Immigration Council study, and they are as much as five times more likely to win their case with a lawyer than without.
“Immigration law is incredibly complex, to the point that even judges and government attorneys often do not fully understand it,” Vincent says. “It takes years to grasp, and to make someone go through immigration court proceedings without a legal representative is totally unfair. There is no due process.”
‘Dummy dates’
As Judge Young wraps up the FAMU hearings, the competing realities of a gridlocked system hitting the accelerator are evident. Thirteen respondents, roughly half of the morning docket, fail to show. Their notices to appear, filed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), were recently changed to a much earlier date with little time to arrive by mail. Young decides to reschedule the baker’s dozen of cases, carving out new dates in her crowded schedule.
Court schedules are not publicly accessible online, and immigrants must call a hotline to get updates. If the judge or DHS attorney fails to show, the hearing is rescheduled. If the immigrant does not appear, however, he or she can be ordered deported immediately.
“There is constant rescheduling and reshuffling and far less consistency than before,” Burk says. “When a court hearing is set, you really don’t know if it’s real or not anymore. It’s a huge burden on the immigrant because they have to come no matter what or risk a removal order, and some are coming from far away. “
In 2019, there were 10,573 removal orders due to a failure to appear, more than double the number from 2016. Several attorneys complained of DHS handing out notices with “dummy dates.”
“DHS agencies have been writing dates, but they are not real court dates,” immigration attorney Lizzie Davis says. “They are never actually scheduled. So when the immigrant calls the hotline, no court date is scheduled. Some people don’t have the knowledge or information to keep checking the hotline to make sure they go on their real assigned date. Often it’s an honest misunderstanding and the person is ordered removed.”
Back in Judge Lake’s courtroom, the monotony is broken by a man with a thick mustache who approaches with a stack of papers the size of a phone book when the name “Janet Gomez” is called. His ex-wife received a notice to appear, but she moved back to Mexico with her children in 2016, he explains. He produces rental and school records, but the judge tells him she cannot accept documents in Spanish without mentioning they would be admissible with a certified translation.
At the request of the government attorney, Lake issues a removal order. Although she already returned to Mexico, Gomez will have a deportation on her record, at a minimum complicating future visits to the United States and, at worst, resulting in a 10-year ban.
Trapped in the court’s overtaxed machinery, more immigrants, particularly those in detention, who can be held for 180 days before a bond hearing, are opting for voluntary departure, withdrawing their case and returning to their country of origin. Voluntary departures have roughly tripled since Trump took office, according to TRAC, to nearly 28,000 in 2019.
“Immigration court is very intimidating and scary for most respondents, even if you are represented by an attorney,” Vincent says. “For unrepresented people, it is very common to be bullied by judges and government attorneys into not exercising your rights.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Bloomberg, Sanders, and Warren want to use post offices as banks
—Politics with your coffee? These cafés are taking sides
—Are we undergoing an industrial revolution or a phase change?
—How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances
—WATCH: What happens to leftover campaign funds once a candidate drops out?
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fortune--2020-03-14--Even while canceling mass gatherings, the U.K. is still aiming for deliberate ‘herd immunity’

Bill Gates cuts formal ties with Microsoft , marking the end of an era

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The U.K. will cancel mass gatherings beginning next weekend, The Guardian newspaper reported Friday night, after a wave of high-profile cancellations and pressure from the public and scientific community appeared to force the government’s hand.
The announcement came after British institutions, from football’s Premier League to the Queen, moved to cancel games and official engagements, despite official government policy that cancellations would do little to stem infections and would cause too large a disruption on public life.
It also followed statements from both well-known scientists and politicians criticizing Boris Johnson’s government’s strategy for fighting coronavirus, which takes a markedly different approach than most European governments and, despite Friday’s announcement, remains in place.
At the heart of that outcry: a policy to push for “herd immunity” to the virus, which would involve allowing at least 40 million Britons to become infected in the hopes of building up a long-term, society-wide resistance to the disease.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak [of the infections], broaden the peak, not suppress it completely,” Patrick Vallance, chief scientific advisor to the U.K. government, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Friday. “Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission.”
For herd immunity to kick in, the U.K. government said that about 60% of the population would need to contract the virus. At that point, the rate of transmissions drops enough to protect the remaining 40% of the population from contracting the virus. But the strategy is also based around trying to manage which people are in that 60%—in an ideal scenario, the government would want only those most likely to experience a mild illness to get infected. (The government has previously said, that in a worst case scenario, 80% of the population might eventually contract the virus, above the German government’s estimate of 70%.)
The U.K.’s approach means many healthy people in the country have to get the disease—while keeping the fatality rate as low as possible. It’s a marked break with the approach in much of the rest of the world, which is to stop people from getting coronavirus, period.
It’s also an approach that is based on the assumptions that COVID-19 will be a recurring, seasonal virus—like the flu—and that once you get the virus, you can’t get it again. If that’s the case—and those are very big ifs—there are usually two ways to manage a virus long-term. The first is through a vaccine, and if one doesn’t exist, the second is through enough people catching the virus, recovering, and being immune to re-infection, therefore making the virus much less common, and less of a risk to those who are vulnerable.
The problem is that this approach is still extremely risky, as multiple scientific experts pointed out.
“I’ve been talking to other academics, science journalists, private companies, & gov’t people all of today and still struggling to understand this,” Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh tweeted. “The gov’t seems to be following flu playbook strategy. But this is not the flu. COVID-19 is much worse & health outcomes are sobering.”
In the mean time, it’s likely impossible to completely sequester those who are vulnerable or know exactly who will be vulnerable in the first place. Herd immunity is difficult; in the case of measles, for example, it’s is only preserved through very high vaccination rates.
During the press conference on Thursday evening with Vallance, chief medical officer Chris Whitty, and prime minister Johnson, the government announced the country was moving to the “delay” phase for managing the virus, which includes attempting to lessen the pressure on the health system by flattening out the curve of cases and pushing the peak of the virus out to the warmer months, when respiratory viruses are typically not as viral.
That approach includes asking people with even very mild cough and flu symptoms to stay home, but stopped short of the measures seen in most other European countries and increasingly in North America, including closing schools and colleges.
The government said Thursday that it may have to impose these more stringent measures at some point in the future, but that doing so now would be premature, disrupting daily life before it was absolutely necessary, and risking the public would grow tired of complying with the restrictions and begin to ignore them just when the peak number of infections might be expected, based on the data the U.K. government has crunched.
It’s a strategy that relies heavily on mathematical modeling and a government behavioral insights team, known by the nickname the “nudge unit”, for their use of a psychological theory to “nudge” people towards certain behaviors—like paying their taxes, or staying home when they feel sick.
But the announced new measures, which are far less strict than those other nations’ have imposed, paired with the emphasis on herd immunity, also provoked staunch criticism from both well-known virologists and epidemiologists, and politicians, including Conservatives.
On the BBC’s Newsnight program, Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary and foreign secretary, called the decision not to cancel large gatherings “surprising and concerning,” and said that given predictions the U.K. will reach Italy’s current infection rates in roughly four weeks, more extreme measures should be taken to prepare.
Meanwhile Rory Stewart, a former Conservative cabinet minister, called it a “very eccentric” tactic in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, and said the government’s approach risked spreading the virus to the rest of the world, while underestimating the impact of the virus on the country’s own health system.
“Britain is trying to follow a theory of herd immunity. In other words they believe it’s impossible to get on top of this disease, and therefore you have to ultimately let it run through the population,” Stewart said.
“That is a very, very big choice. It’s not a scientific choice, it’s fundamentally a political choice. These are judgements about what the population are prepared to put up with, these are judgements about how long people are prepared to have schools closed, these are judgements fundamentally about economics.”
Stewart added that he thought the government had made the wrong judgement by not being transparent, and said that “when the public understands that implicit in this argument is that they would rather that people died earlier to prevent more people dying later, the public will be very troubled.”
“It is baffling,” tweeted Gavin Yamey, director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University. “How does Vallance *know* that this is going to be an endemic seasonal virus? How does Vallance *know* that the best approach is to deliberately hope most people get infected? Where on earth is the evidence behind this very, very risky approach??”
The announcement of the government’s new strategy on Wednesday included a new policy that the NHS will stop testing for the virus outside of hospitals, leaving mild cases untested and unconfirmed. That would make it more difficult to determine when the population had indeed reached herd immunity, other than by extrapolating backwards from the fatality rate of confirmed coronavirus cases in hospitals.
But the lack of testing for mild cases, which are believed to be the vast majority, was also likely to distort the country’s fatality statistics, pointed out Lindsay Broadbent, an expert on respiratory virus infections at the Centre for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast.
“Testing as many as possible is so important. South Korea are an excellent example of this,” she tweeted. “With the U.K. gov announcing they will restrict testing to more severe patients this will make isolation of infected difficult and will look like we have a high fatality rate!”
On Friday afternoon, the U.K. had 798 reported cases of coronavirus, a jump of more than 35% from the previous day, with 10 fatalities.
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fortune--2020-03-14--Bill Gates cuts formal ties with Microsoft, marking the end of an era

Even while canceling mass gatherings , the U.K. is still aiming for deliberate ‘ herd immunity ’

Microsoft marked the end of an era on Friday when Bill Gates stepped down from its board, severing all official ties with the company he co-founded and helped turn into a tech colossus.
The billionaire said he chose to leave Microsoft’s board—in addition to Berkshire Hathaway’s on Friday—“to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change.”
Although Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2008 and relinquished his chairman’s title in 2014, his announcement on Friday marks a huge milestone. For the first time since he co-founded the company in 1975 with his childhood friend, the late Paul Allen, he has no formal role at the company.
Still, Gates, who will be a technical advisor to current CEO Satya Nadella, said that he is “in no way means stepping away from the company.” But that is unlikely to include major strategic decisions, like when the company dissolved a high-profile partnership with IBM in the early 1990s to focus on its Windows operating system.
In many ways Gates is synonymous with Microsoft as the late Steve Jobs was with Apple. Both executives co-founded companies that became icons in American business and helped usher in the era of personal computing.
While Jobs was known for his showmanship and marketing expertise, Gates was a more of a cerebral icon whose nerdy demeanor helped him appeal to the millions of developers who built software on top of Microsoft Windows.
But despite their contrasting personalities (Gates said in a recent interview that he envied Jobs’ public speaking skills), both executives were occasionally ruthless in business. During Gates’ tenure as CEO, the U.S. government won a lawsuit in which Microsoft was found to have violated antitrust laws by requiring computer makers to include Microsoft’s web browser along with Windows, hurting competing browser makers.
During a deposition, Gates was combative and condescending to his interrogators, showing the public a confrontational aspect of his personality that his dorky appearance may have masked. Although the Justice Department eventually settled with Microsoft, Gates’ company became the image of monopolistic capitalism that needed reigning in.
Since Gates stepped down as chairman, Microsoft has since flourished into a leading cloud computing company, surprising skeptics who thought the Windows-maker had lost its mojo when it famously missed the rise of mobile computing. While Nadella refocused Microsoft on business customers, Gates increasingly refocused on his charitable efforts.
Indeed, Gates built a second career for himself as one of the world’s leading philanthropists through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The non-profit he created with his wife nearly 20 years ago has since invested billions of dollars in programs intended to combat poverty and develop vaccines to eradicate diseases like HIV and malaria. In a statement explaining his revamped role at Microsoft and Berkshire, Gates said he believes their leadership teams “have never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step.”
“Microsoft will always be an important part of my life’s work and I will continue to be engaged with Satya and the technical leadership to help shape the vision and achieve the company’s ambitious goals,” Gates said. “I feel more optimistic than ever about the progress the company is making and how it can continue to benefit the world.”
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fortune--2020-03-13--Updated: Google is developing a coronavirus testing website for the U.S.

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Google is helping the U.S. government build a website to speed testing for the coronavirus, President Donald Trump said at a news conference.
However, shortly after the president’s comments, Google indicated that the effort by its Verily life sciences subsidiary is far more limited than the president indicated and that it is nowhere near ready for a nationwide debut.
“We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing,” Google said on Twitter. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.
The website will help people figure out if they need testing and direct them to the closest location, which will include drive-through testing centers, Trump said. Alphabet Inc.’s Google has roughly 1,700 engineers working on the project, he added.
Verily has partnered in the past with biotech companies to track and combat widespread diseases, including the Zika virus.
On March. 3, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat told Congress that the agency was using Google location data for “travel patterns and for other means.” She didn’t provide more details and Google and the CDC have not commented on this.
Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai has sent a steady stream of memos to his employees in recent weeks, calling on them to rise to the challenge of helping people communicate and access the best information during the pandemic.
The company has aggressively intervened in some of its most popular online services to limit the spread of hoaxes and misinformation and provide its users with helpful and accurate health information. Google searches related to the virus trigger an “SOS Alert,” which shows updates from mainstream news publications and health authorities ahead of regular search results.
Update: This article was updated from the original with a comment from Google.
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fortune--2020-03-14--Four lessons from the coronavirus

Four lessons from the coronavirus

‘ Where ’ s the leadership ?
’ A Q & A with WHO special envoy David Nabarro on COVID-19

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As of this writing, there have been 127,863 confirmed cases and 4,718 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.
In the U.S., there have been over 1,200 cases and 38 deaths. In three short months, a novel coronavirus has captured global consciousness and changed day-to-day life in large parts of the world, in the process becoming a public health emergency that is testing, like perhaps no event before it, our global capacity to respond to large-scale infectious threats.
As public health agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) work around the clock to coordinate a local, national, and global response to the rapidly changing situation, we are, collectively, learning how to better grapple with this epidemic.
While there will be much to learn when (we hope) this epidemic is over, I think there are some key lessons that emerge clearly that are worth highlighting even now, when the epidemic is at the very forefront, dominating all our conversations, sharpening our thinking.
Lesson one: public health is political
It is difficult to find any discussion about COVID-19 that does not mention the actions of a government—whether it is the Chinese government’s handling of disease containment or the American government’s efforts to keep COVID-19 from spreading to its shores.
When large-scale, sudden health challenges strike, political leadership is essential for coordinating response and communicating to the public accurate, up-to-date information about the threat. It is on the latter point, especially, that the Trump administration has struggled. The president has contradicted CDC officials, mischaracterized the nature of the threat, and attempted to portray virus fears as a hoax by political opponents.
These actions do not help efforts to stop this outbreak. In fact, they hinder them, by muddying the waters when clear communication can mean the difference between sickness and health, life, and death.
The Trump administration has also cut critical public health programs created to protect populations during disease outbreaks, further undermining response.
In addition to coordinating public health response and controlling the budget of key health organizations, politics shapes health at a fundamental level, influencing the social, economic, and environmental conditions that create a context for health or disease.
COVID-19 has exposed just how lacking investment in improving these conditions has long been in the US. We have not done enough to prevent pockets of marginalization from emerging within the broader population. This has increased certain groups’ vulnerability to COVID-19—older adults, in particular, and those living with underlying chronic disease.
The choice to help or ignore such populations is deeply political, and it extends to other groups facing marginalization, from LGBT populations, to immigrants, to people of color. There is ample research showing how the conditions of marginalization undermine health.
For example, laws allowing businesses to deny services to same-sex couples have been linked to a 46 percent increase in mental distress among sexual minority adults. Socioeconomic status is one of the key drivers of health, and this status is inseparable from the world of politics.
Lesson two: science matters
In this age of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” it is possible to think science is somehow less relevant than it once was.
Denial of climate change and the safety of vaccines are examples of how science can be pushed aside when it conflicts with a political agenda. President Trump’s dim view of health authorities is another reflection of this anti-science trend.
Yet science matters. This is especially clear during a disease outbreak. For example, social distancing—the practice of preventing the spread of disease by limiting the interaction of individuals and groups—may seem like an obvious action to take during outbreaks of disease.
But there is much we are still learning about the science of why and how social distancing works. Research like this study of social distancing during the 1918—1919 flu pandemic helps inform our understanding of the efficacy of this approach. The study found a strong link between “early, sustained, and layered application” of measures such as school closures and bans on public gatherings and mitigating the effects of the pandemic.
Such research is just as important to pandemic response as the science of vaccines, helping us chart a course through shifting circumstances. It is important to listen to what science tells us—not just about responding to COVID-19, but about what we can do to build a healthier world every day.
Lesson three: education of the public matters
Infectious challenges shine a light on a central concern of public health: that it is about public health—about improving the health of populations. This is not what we tend to think about when we think about health in this country.
Instead, we think about the health of individuals, of the doctors and medicines that help us recover when we, as individuals, get sick. We do this instead of thinking about the public health steps we should take to prevent disease in populations—to keep from needing doctors and medicines to begin with.
Preventing disease in populations takes robust, responsive health systems, cities and communal spaces that are built with health in mind, economies that do not generate the poverty and income instability that feed poor health, and cooperation at the local, national, and global level in creating the conditions for health.
All of this requires long-term planning, and a willingness to invest in health as a public good worthy of collective by-in. This begins with educating the public about what really matters for health. The reaction to Covid-19 has shown how much we still must do in this regard.
In the weeks since the disease was first directed in Wuhan, Hubei, China, anti-Chinese sentiment has been part of the narrative about Covid-19. This is not only unfortunate in itself, it undermines our ability to address the disease. Navigating infectious threats—and promoting public health in general—depends on our ability to work together, which we cannot do if we are willing to tolerate marginalization, bigotry, and the reflexive building of walls.
Lesson four: we should always be talking about public health
In the film Glengarry Glen Ross, there is a famous scene where a character tells a group of salesmen that the key to their profession is “ABC,” or “Always Be Closing.”
The key to a healthier world, where we are far less vulnerable to infectious threats, could be said to be “ABTAPH,” or “Always Be Talking About Public Health.” This means talking about public health not just in times of challenge, but at all times.
Imagine, for a moment, what our country would be like if we placed a concern for public health at the heart of all we do. If we poured money into the public health programs the Trump administration has cut. If we refused to accept certain groups facing disproportionate vulnerability to disease, understanding that their vulnerability is our vulnerability, especially during an epidemic.
COVID-19 is a novel challenge, but it is not the first large-scale health threat to show us why we need to make this better world a reality. The destructive hurricanes of recent years are another warning of how disasters can be far worse when we neglect public health.
When hurricanes strike, a population’s ability to “bounce back” is shaped by the conditions that influence public health in a region prior to the disaster. For example, a 2010 study found that poverty, housing, and immigrant and minority status all played a role in creating vulnerability among populations prior to Hurricane Katrina, and increased the potential for suffering after the storm.
When hurricanes strike, we are quick to mobilize aid for the affected, just as we demand rapid response from government and health authorities in the event of a disease outbreak. Yet, in both cases, we are less likely to address the “preexisting conditions” that can worsen these acute challenges. Disasters happen. We need to have the public health infrastructure in place so that, when they do, their effect is as minimal as we can make it.
COVID-19 has revealed weak points in how we think about health and how we prepare for disease. Many questions about COVID-19 remain. Perhaps the most important one is: can we engage in the uncomfortable conversations we need to have that can lead to a healthier world?
It is only by having these conversations, and by learning the lessons of challenges like COVID-19, that we can build a world that is less vulnerable to challenges like what we now face.
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, is Professor and Dean at the Boston University School of Public Health. His latest book is Pained: Uncomfortable conversations about the public’s health. Follow him on Twitter: @sandrogalea
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Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-14--‘Where’s the leadership?’ A Q&A with WHO special envoy  David Nabarro on COVID-19

U.S. travel ban extends to UK and Ireland , while Trump eyes domestic limits

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Fortune spoke with David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organization (WHO) on COVID-19, late into his day on Thursday. The infectious disease expert, who previously worked on SARS, Ebola, cholera, and influenza outbreaks, was troubled by the world’s fragmented response to the recently declared pandemic, but hopeful that a coordinated international response to the novel coronavirus quickly spreading around the world could prevail.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The WHO declared COVID-19 has become a pandemic on Wednesday. How do you see this playing out?
Nabarro: This is something that is actually capable of being tamed and overcome by humanity quite quickly if we want and if we can organize ourselves to do it. The question is whether it’s beyond the capacity of the current generation of Western leaders to rise to the challenge.
I’ve been working with the WHO on this for about six weeks, and I’ve also worked previously on Ebola in West Africa, on the influenza pandemic, H1N1 in 2009-2010, and on bird flu in 2005-2006, and I was in the WHO when we had the SARS outbreak in 2002. This is infinitely more serious than all of those in terms of its potential impact.
It’s also potentially soluble, I think, even more soluble than some of the others. If people make relatively modest changes to their behavior, if public health systems throughout the world can function as they’re designed to function, if hospitals can be organized to deal properly with the workload of people with coronavirus, and if business and governments can come together and approach this as a massive challenge that we’re going to respond to collectively, then it can be done.
How are things going so far?
Although we’ve seen success in some countries that is quite remarkable, there is a group of leaders, particularly in Europe and North America who are just not getting with the issue properly and the consequences of that could be very serious.
We saw in China—after some initial missteps that probably pile into insignificance compared with some of the missteps being made now—a really extraordinary response of society and government. Not just in Hubei province, where they were able to bring a massive tragedy into some kind of order and under control—it’s not there yet, but it’s coming.
But more importantly, we saw that the whole thing did not spread out and overwhelm the rest of China, and that through quite a deal of discipline and organization, the spread of the disease into other provinces has been contained. We saw in Singapore, as the result of really effective public health work, good hospital work, and a really fantastic collection of people, the virus being contained. We’ve seen in South Korea after problems at the beginning, they’ve also managed to get it under control, and it’s been a real team effort. And in Japan, there are still a few challenges but it’s getting better. Southeast Asia has shown us that it can be done. Are the lessons of Southeast Asia being followed elsewhere? I don’t know.
We see in Northern Italy something went very badly wrong. We’ve got reports from what’s happening in some parts of Northern Italy. They’re really disturbing. I think they’ll get it sorted, but it will be at a huge cost, not just in terms of death, but at huge costs to the fabric of society and to the economy.
What are we seeing in the rest of Europe? Half-hearted, slightly lackadaisical, dismissive responses in one country and the effort to try to handle things and not get too much disturbance because there are elections coming up in another country this weekend. Real uncertainty in another country as to the best way to handle things. Altogether fragmented leadership. The wonderful instruments that exist in the European Union are not being used. So I’m really concerned about what’s happening in Europe. I hope it won’t happen, but I anticipate that during the next two or three weeks we will see more explosive outbreaks in Europe.
Look at North America—really peculiar leadership. The wrong things being prioritized, inconsistency across the states, and the likelihood of major, explosive outbreaks in at least three locations in the coming weeks. Businesses are contacting me and my colleagues, saying, “What’s going wrong? What can we do to make this as time-limited as possible?”
But leaders are making remarks like, “This is being imported from somewhere else,” and they don’t talk about sorting out their own countries. They make remarks like, “We’ll wait til the time is right. We don’t want people to get bored.” So. the prospect is that there will be intense outbreaks of coronavirus coming up in the next two months in different parts of Europe because there is transmission going on but it’s not being detected.
Let’s say it goes on as it is at the moment. The collective of the pandemic is doubling in size in terms of cases every five to six days. We currently have a cumulative number of 115,000 cases. If we go along at the present rate, the collective total will be a million by the beginning of next month and a billion sometime in June.
And if we’re unlucky and it doesn’t calm down in the hot weather in the North, it will go on spreading into Africa and different parts of Asia. It won’t be detected through testing. Suddenly there will be large numbers of people, very sick, turning up at ill-equipped hospitals and there will be a much higher death rate than in parts of the world that have reasonably good healthcare.
The world collectively has a choice right now. Everybody, everywhere, in every nation, especially those with transmission underway, should be focusing entirely on what they’re going to do to deal with this extraordinary existential threat.
It has the potential to kill many people and completely destroy economies, undermine the painstaking gains that we’ve made over the last 10-15 years and create possibly the most extraordinary recession we’ll have known in our lifetimes. Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO], is thinking—as are others in the international system—where’s the leadership? I’ve never felt so profoundly depressed in my professional life.
What went so wrong in Italy?
The virus was circulating and not noticed for three weeks probably— and then suddenly explosive transmission. It doubles every few days. What we learned with Ebola is our institutions tend to be designed to increase efforts in a linear way.
When you’ve got an exponential problem going like that it actually feels as though you’re standing still because the exponential is so fast. It feels like you’re never in front of the curve.
The only way you can get ahead of an exponential curve is through big shifts or resets, and in a way that was what Tedros was trying to do by calling this a pandemic. He was to trying to get every leader in the world to realize that the way in which they were doing it was just not good enough.
What should we be doing?
People say to me, “Shouldn’t we cancel big events? Should we be doing this or that?”
Nobody should be doing big events. None. We shouldn’t be having football games. Major companies should be not just sending people home; they should be stopping. We should be putting every single bit of human energy that we can into this giant jump we need to make in capacity to get on top of these outbreaks.
So the whole of the population knows what they’ve got to do to reduce risk to themselves and to others. And so the public health services work beautifully like they’ve done in these countries that have succeeded. So you track people, you find the chains of transmission, you follow up the contacts. Hospital services—you build new hospitals. Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, out of containers or empty sports stadiums. Even if they’re not being used, you have them there ready. You need the capacity so if the thing goes on exponentially increasing, you can get it right.
At the moment, hospital capacity in the U.S. and Europe is full. I’ve got reports from anesthesiologists and others in Lombardy [in Italy] saying the kind of decisions they’re having to make about who can survive and who can’t survive right now in overfull intensive care units with a shortage of ventilators are absolutely barbaric in a modern country, a G7 country. So everyone should be focused on this, and it should be organized.
What I would say to leaders in the West is please study what China had to do and please study what Korea had to do and study what Singapore is doing. Please study the difficulties that Iran has faced. Please study what has happened in Italy, and form your own conclusions.
The WHO advised against restricting travel and trade early in the outbreak. It has since praised China’s success, which came from a lock down approach. What is the role for travel and trade in this pandemic? Is locking things down the right approach? Should it have been done earlier?
This is a really tricky one. Creating a barrier between myself and the problem would work if the barriers are going to be watertight. But you can’t create watertight barriers. It’s very hard to block borders of any nation unless they happen to be a sort of island that’s pretty well-fortified. If you’ve got land borders people will come through. Second, people can have disease but not show it. And if you’re saying geography, in most cases you’ll be out of date fast because this thing is popping up in so many different places. So it’s crude but not stupid. You can slow things down.
Where everything goes wrong is when one country feels that they’re is somehow being blamed or punished for the fact that people of their country are traveling. And then you get resentment and damage to what we need most of all, which is international cooperation. Without international cooperation, these kinds of things are so hard to deal with.
So there’s times when restricting movement inside countries and restricting movement between countries is a logical thing to do. But I’m really wishing that it can be done through collective effort. Helping Lombardy to have a restriction on movement, yes, but [Lombardy] also comes up and abuts against a France here and Switzerland there, so we need to draw the curves not so much that it’s designed around one particular country but around a number of countries. It shouldn’t be some national game.
How’s international cooperation going right now?
Despite the fact that they’ve got this sort of huge wiring system right across the world—the UN system—national priorities are making harmonious behavior super difficult. Suspicions, blaming, and all that. Perhaps it’s just the environment in which we have to work, and we should stop being starry-eyed in thinking that collaboration will come back.
But I am starry-eyed, and I remain of the opinion that getting on top of or ahead of this outbreak is only going to be possible through a common narrative, a shared strategy, a willingness to look at those who need the most help and to reserve this precious equipment and reagents and treatments for those most in need and avoiding all this stigmatizing and stuff.
I’m still hopeful. I still think that in the end we’ll come around. I think businesses will sooner or later through their CEOs come up against the state and government and say, “You’ve going to do better.” Tedros declared a pandemic because he was frustrated by the failure of governments to take this seriously. And I think businesses will come next, and, frankly, I think the people will be the next phase. I think there will be a growing number of people who say, “Come on. This is so important. It’s the future of our world, and we just have to work on it together.”
What do you tell business leaders when they turn to you?
Businesses are amazing because their CEOs have realized that not only are their business models in real difficulty, they also realize that they connect with billions of people through their brands. They’ve got huge supply chains; they got big shareholding networks. They want to survive. They don’t want the markets to be completely damaged. So they see it in their interest as being part of the response.
Klaus Schawb, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) said, “I want to give all the assets the WEF has to deal with this outbreak. It’s the most important thing going on that has happened in my time as chairman. I’ll stop everything.”
He’s got everybody working from home. He’s got all these industry groups completely focused on how each sector group can be helpful in relation to the pandemic. He’s got CEOs coming together each week on a platform, several hundreds of them thinking how they can connect, carry messages, empower people, make them feel strong, give them leadership. So businesses are just there and engaged and brilliant. They say, “We’ll do what’s needed.” And so the real challenge for me is governments somehow either saying “You public health people are exaggerating,” or saying this is the fault of x, y, or z country for bringing the virus into countries when in fact the virus is already there.
In the U.S., we have an issue with many people not having paid sick leave. Especially in the service industry—they can’t afford not to go to work.
I think this is the most important point of all. No health insurance, no nice employer is going to continue paying them when they’re working from home because their work involves contact with people.
People in the construction industry, people in the hospitality sector, people who work in restaurant kitchens, people who work in utilities—some of them will be able to work, but an awful lot of them won’t. And then their kids are going to be sent home from school.
Who’s going to look after the kids? The whole thing is going to hit poor people like nothing we’ve ever known before in advanced economies. And that really worries us. In Italy at the moment, there’s a huge underclass of poor people who are wondering, how in the hell are we going to survive?
Is this something businesses are ready to address?
I don’t know. This is a point we’re starting to explore with them. Perhaps we’ll get alacrity with them when we point out that this will be a bit of a dollars and cents issue.
This has been a process of continuous discovery, and as people start to come to terms with what this really means, there’s been a huge mindset shift among many people in the private sector over the last two weeks. The WHO can’t be responsible for some of this. So I expect this will be something that really would need to be an initiative from business leaders.
Anything else you would add?
In the U.S., you have a lovely thing where you give special attention to serving members of the military, where they get to go to the front of security lines at airports and have special lounges at stations and so on. They’re treated with real respect and people say thank you for your service.
We need to do that with health workers—not just the doctors and professors but also the nurses, the auxiliaries, the people who are going to be keeping the hospitals going, who are going to be gowned up in PPE—hot, sweaty, because it’s going to get hot—people who we’re going to depend on carry us through this.
Anything we can do to really help increase the respect that society gives to health professionals—because we depend on them more than ever for this—is great. In Europe, the real value of their income has been dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping over the years. Typically, the [female] health workers, they’ll be the ones who save a bunch of lives, and they’ll be the ones who face the greatest dangers. It’d be really nice if we can get real authentic support for them.
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—Amazon tells employees to work from home if they can. Warehouse workers can’t
—Why Dollar General thinks coronavirus can help business
—Coronavirus may not be all bad for tech. Consider the “stay at home” stocks
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-14--U.S. travel ban extends to UK and Ireland, while Trump eyes domestic limits

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President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the United States will broaden its European travel ban, adding the United Kingdom and Ireland to its list, and was considering imposing restrictions on travel within the U.S. to areas hit hard by the coronavirus spread.
Under the restrictions on European travel, American citizens, green card holders and others are still allowed to return home to the U.S., but will be funneled to 13 airports and be subjected to health screenings and quarantine orders.
“If you don’t have to travel, I wouldn’t do it,” Trump said.
The new restrictions came as in Britain, the death toll nearly doubled from the day before to 21, and the number of people infected rose to over 1,100 from about 800 the previous day. In Ireland there were 90 confirmed cases and one death by Friday. The Irish government hasn’t released any updated figures on Saturday.
The U.S. announced earlier this week a 30-day ban on flights covered only by the 26-nation Schengen area, the European Union’s border-free travel zone, that does not include Britain or Ireland.
The move comes hours after the House approved legislation to provide direct relief to Americans suffering physically, financially and emotionally from the coronavirus pandemic. That followed Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, freeing up money and resources to fight it, and threw his support behind the congressional aid package.
Trump’s emergency declaration unleashed as much as $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the crisis.
Trump also announced a range of executive actions, including a new public-private partnership to expand coronavirus testing capabilities with drive-through locations, as Washington tries to subdue the virus whose spread is roiling markets, shuttering institutions and disrupting the lives of everyday Americans.
But he asserted “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the slow rollout of testing.
The hard-fought aid package will provide free testing, sick pay for workers, enhanced unemployment benefits and bolstered food programs.
The House passed the bill after midnight on a bipartisan vote, 363-40. It now goes to the Senate..
Trump tweeted his approval, all but ensuring that wary Republicans would join with a robust vote. “Good teamwork between Republicans & Democrats as the House passes the big CoronaVirus Relief Bill,” he tweeted Saturday. “People really pulled together. Nice to see!”
Trump’s tweet of approval instilled fresh energy in the measure, all but ensuring that wary Republicans would join with a robust vote.
The crush of activity capped a tumultuous week in Washington as the fast-moving virus left ordinary Americans suddenly navigating self-quarantines, school closures and a changed way of life.
Trump took a number of other actions to bolster energy markets, ease the financial burden for Americans with student loans and give medical professionals additional flexibility in treating patients during the public health crisis.
Central to the aid package from Congress, which builds on an emergency $8.3 billion measure approved earlier, are the free testing, sick pay and family leave provisions.
Providing sick pay for workers is a crucial element of federal efforts to stop the rapid spread of the infection. Officials warn that the nation’s healthcare system could quickly become overwhelmed with gravely sick patients, as suddenly happened in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus.
The ability to ensure paychecks will keep flowing — for people self-quarantining or caring for others — can help assure Americans they will not fall into financial hardship. The legislation also offers three months of paid family and medical leave. Small and mid-sized employers will be reimbursed through tax credits.
Voting in the Senate is not yet set, with senators out of town for the weekend. But Senate Leader Mitch McConnell canceled a planned recess week and senators were scheduled to return Monday. He said he expects most senators will want to “act swiftly.”
Both Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Pelosi promised a third coronavirus package will follow soon, with more aggressive steps to boost the U.S. economy, which economists fear has already slipped into recession.
The financial markets closed on an upswing after one of the worst nosedives since 1987.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to be over it.
Trump on Friday also told people to expect the imminent rollout of a web site “facilitated” by Google that would guide users through a series of questions to determine whether they should be screened for the virus. If testing is recommended, users would be directed to a local testing location, which could include parking lots at Walmart, Target, Walgreens and other chains.
“It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past,” Trump said in a thinly veiled dig at the Obama administration’s disastrous rollout in 2013 of its online health care marketplace.
But how quickly is in question. Google said the website, from its life science division Verily, is still “in the early stages of development.” Verily first plans to roll out testing out in the Bay Area of San Francisco, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time, the company said in a statement.
The Pentagon and State Department announced new guidance aimed at limiting movement of its personnel and promoting social distancing in hopes of reducing the impact of the pandemic on the agencies.
Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist said the department is “halting all domestic travel, including Permanent Change of Station and Temporary Duty” from Monday until May 11. The travel restrictions also apply to military civilian employees.
The State Department announced it has begun rotational and telework schedules and issued general guidance calling on domestic and overseas personnel to engage in “mission critical” travel only.


fortune--2020-03-14--White House now conducting temperature checks amid outbreak

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The White House announced Saturday that it is now conducting temperature checks on anyone who is in close contact with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
The move is being taken out of an abundance of caution in response to the coronavirus outbreak, said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.
Trump has had multiple direct and indirect contacts with people who have tested positive for the pandemic virus. On Friday, he declared a state of emergency as schools and workplaces across the country shuttered, flights were canceled and Americans braced for war against the health threat.
Trump spent time last weekend at his private club in Florida with at least three people who have now tested positive.
The Brazilian Embassy in Washington announced late Friday that the country’s chargé d’affaires, Nestor Forster, tested positive after sitting at Trump’s dinner table. So, too, have a top aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and an individual who attended a fundraiser Sunday with Trump, according to two Republican officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss private health matters.
Trump has been known to flout public health advice — and was eagerly shaking hands during an event Friday — but acknowledged he “most likely” will be tested soon. The White House physician has indicated that Trump’s interactions were low risk and testing was not necessary.
A representative from the White House physician’s office took the temperate of members of the media who were at the White House on Saturday, going around to each person and putting the device to their heads. A reporter with a suspected elevated temperature was not allowed into the briefing room for a news conference with Trump and Pence about the outbreak.
Public health officials say that individuals with a cough and elevated temperatures of 100.4 degrees or higher are deemed concerning.
Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Miller, tweeted that according to the White House Medical Unit, the temperature was taken three times over a 15 minute period and all three registered above the 1004. guidelines.


fortune--2020-03-14--The best Twitter accounts to follow for reliable information on the coronavirus outbreak

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In the face of a global pandemic like the coronavirus, one of the best defenses is staying armed with information. Misinformation is spreading quickly and easily as the world faces all the anxiety around COVID-19. That makes it hard to decipher what is real and what is fake, particularly on social media, where most Americans get at least some of their news.
Fortune compiled a Twitter list of trusted public health officials, epidemiologists, virus experts, family doctors, and others for you to follow.
Many accounts, like Dr. David Juurlink, are sharing their own experiences in the field treating coronavirus patients and giving advice for the best ways individuals can act to stop its spread.
Colleagues @BogochIsaac and @ADetsky, who like many of us worked on the front lines of SARS, have urgent advice for the Ontario government on how to confront COVID-19.
Their advice is of vital importance, and it's also largely generalizable.
/1https://t.co/G83ZwzXPIv — David Juurlink (@DavidJuurlink) March 13, 2020
Some share helpful graphics that explain the spread of the virus across continents.
Over the last days (and nights) @danielgavrilov built this interactive COVID19 table.
It answers the question:
How long did it take for the number of confirmed cases to double?
It also plots cases over time.
This table – for all countries – is here: https://t.co/6CMdqP6MpX pic.twitter.com/UY0L5ehejV — Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) March 13, 2020
And others post messages refuting the spread of misinformation and pseudoscience.
My new comment: "Alternative medicine & the #coronavirus" https://t.co/PZeeVF8bEv cc @DrJenGunter @picardonhealth #COVID19
I’m glad there is growing outrage about the coronavirus bunk. But the bunk has always been there. It shouldn’t take a public health crisis to stir action. — Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) March 12, 2020
Additionally, Fortune‘s “Coronavirus updates” list includes several government offices and officials sharing communications on behalf of their country or state’s health departments.
Find the latest available information and answers to frequently asked questions about #COVID19 on our website: https://t.co/FVGvp5L4jy pic.twitter.com/JkaOBr3FEW — U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) March 12, 2020
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to get a refund on your Broadway tickets after coronavirus shut down
—The oil sector takes its next hit: Coronavirus on offshore rigs
—Some of the most extreme ways companies are combating coronavirus
—How luxury designers in Italy’s fashion heartland are facing coronavirus
—Amazon tells employees to work from home if they can. Warehouse workers can’t
—Why Dollar General thinks coronavirus can help business
—Coronavirus may not be all bad for tech. Consider the “stay at home” stocks
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-14--Apple closes most of its stores

Apple closes most of its stores

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Apple said Saturday it’s closing its hundreds of retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27 and is moving to remote work in order to help reduce the spread of coronavirus.
In a letter posted on Apple’s website, CEO Tim Cook said that the “most effective way to minimize risk of the virus’s transmission is to reduce density and maximize social distance,” which led to the decision to temporarily close the stores and move corporate employees outside of Greater China to work remotely.
Apple has nearly 460 locations across the world outside of China, including about 270 stores in the U.S. Apple had earlier shuttered its stores in Italy and Spain as the world deals with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cook said that all hourly employees at the closed stores will continue to receive normal pay. He also said that the Cupertino, California-based technology giant has donated $15 million to fight coronavirus and that it would be matching employee donations two-to-one.
Cook didn’t say how long the remote work edict will last, but he said that “those whose work requires them to be on site should follow guidance to maximize interpersonal space.” Apple employees at several offices had been encouraged to work remotely this past week. Cook closed his letter by thanking “the heroic first responders, doctors, nurses, researchers, public health experts and public servants” working to fight the pandemic.
The store closures is an extension of its efforts to cope with the outbreak. Cook sent a memo to employees about a week ago offering staff at most of its global offices the ability to work from home. At the time, he called the outbreak an “unprecedented event” and a “challenging moment.”
As a U.S.-based technology company that builds the vast majority of its products via a China supply chain, Apple has been uniquely impacted by the coronavirus. It’s supply chain had been set back by weeks with factory closures, and products like the iPhone and iPad Pro have seen constraints in meeting orders.
On Friday, Apple said it would hold its annual conference for software developers online, scrapping a June gathering that normally brings thousands of people together in San Jose, California.
Apple was one of the first companies to disclose the virus’s impact on its financials, saying last month that it will no longer meet its March quarter guidance range of $63 billion to $67 billion. It didn’t say how its two week closure of most stores would further impact revenue.
The stock has declined 5.3% this year, compared with the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 12% slump.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Google Doodle celebrates International Women’s Day
—Growing coronavirus threat weighs on Apple
—When will PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X debut?
—NASA hiring new astronauts for the first time in four years
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-14--Coronavirus forces Apple’s hand on WWDC

Coronavirus forces Apple’s hand on WWDC

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The impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Apple rose to a new level this week when the company shifted plans for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), usually attended by tens of thousands of people.
Apple, which has already been hit by production problems and slow sales because of the virus, said that WWDC would be online-only this year.
Meanwhile, Apple closed its stores in Italy and reopened all of its stores in China in response to COVID-19 developments in each country.
But not even COVID-19 appears to be slowing Apple’s product development efforts. According to several reports this week, Apple’s work on new products, including updated MacBooks and a new service for people to use during workouts, is underway.
An online-only WWDC
In a widely anticipated move, Apple has canceled the in-person component to its annual WWDC and will instead host what it calls a “completely new online experience”. It would be the first online-only WWDC in Apple’s history. Many details have yet to be released. But Apple still plans a keynote address to unveil new software.
iOS 14 leaks
Apple hasn’t introduced its next mobile operating system, assumed to be called iOS 14, but that software leaked online this week. In doing so, it revealed some details about upcoming Apple products. Chief among them was a reference to a new iPad Pro that could ship with a better camera, according to 9to5Mac, which obtained a copy of the leaked iOS 14 code. The Apple-tracking site also found mentions of a new budget-friendly iPhone Apple could debut in the coming months, as well as a redesigned Apple TV remote. Apple hasn’t confirmed the code’s authenticity, and likely won’t until it’s ready to unveil iOS 14 later this year.
What’s next for watchOS?
Apple is working on a new version of watchOS, called watchOS 7, according to 9to5Mac. Apple plans to introduce a tachymeter for Apple Watch that can measure a person’s speed and distance traveled during use, according to the report. The software also includes custom, user-designed watch faces and a new feature that will limit the time children spend using Apple Watch, so they can focus on school or sleep. Apple hasn’t confirmed the leaked code’s authenticity.
Apple’s retail disruption
There was plenty of news about Apple’s retail stores this week. In the U.S., the company suspended all Today at Apple learning sessions, but has so far kept all of its stores open. In China, Apple has finally reopened all stores after a long closure over COVID-19 fears. But in Italy, where COVID-19 has forced a nationwide lockdown, Apple has closed all retail locations until further notice. Meanwhile, the company has told stores to no longer allow customers to try on AirPods and Apple Watch until further notice.
Apple moves to the gym
Apple is working on a new fitness-focused app for Apple Watch and iPhone, codenamed Seymour, according to CNBC. The software, which is under the direction of Apple’s resident fitness instructor Jay Blahnik, gives users access to guided workouts in strength training, cycling, and other fitness activities. Apple plans to premiere the app later this year, according to the report.
Get ready for new Macs
Apple is working on several new Macs, according to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In a note to investors this week, Kuo said Apple will announce new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks in the second quarter. Kuo, who has one of the better track records on predicting Apple’s next moves, also told investors that Apple is working on a redesigned MacBook that will go on sale in 2021. It’s unclear, however, what the redesigned MacBook will include.
Apple supports LGBTQ community
Apple, along with several other companies, including Amazon, Google, and IKEA, this week signed a letter opposing state legislation across the country that would limit medical care access to transgender people and ultimately “promote mistreatment of a targeted LBGTQ population.” In addition to the medical implications, the companies are concerned that the b ills being discussed in several states would make members of the LGBTQ community feel unsafe. The companies say the “less inclusive practices lead to less employee productivity and customer service.” You can read the full letter here.
One more thing…
Elon Musk wasn’t happy with Apple this week. In an interview at the Satellite 2020 conference, Musk said Apple’s recent iOS 13 update broke his e-mail and that Apple’s recent software updates are “not great.” As someone who has grown increasingly frustrated with iOS 13’s bugs, I agree.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Google Doodle celebrates International Women’s Day
—Growing coronavirus threat weighs on Apple
—When will PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X debut?
—NASA hiring new astronauts for the first time in four years
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.