fortune--2020-04-21--How over 100 live-event companies pivoted to building temporary coronavirus hospitals and testing si

How over 100 live-event companies pivoted to building temporary coronavirus hospitals and testing sites

Given that the people who work in the event production industry are no stranger to sudden crises, minor and major, it’s not surprising that they’d be able to quickly adapt to the havoc of the coronavirus outbreak. But Live for Life, a consortium of over 100 companies in the space, is more than just an on-the-fly response to the pandemic. The group has rapidly united competitors, who normally handle events ranging from festivals to automotive conferences. Now they have come together to build temporary hospitals and drive-thru testing centers, supporting nationwide efforts in combating the disease while keeping as many people employed as possible.
Though it officially launched on April 13, Live for Life had been in the works for weeks with three firms—George P. Johnson, Czarnowski, and Exploring, Inc.—leading the charge with projects that have included the hospitals in New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Center and California’s Santa Clara Convention Center.
“Basically, we understood the power that the events industry has relevant to planning large-scale events, as well as the infrastructure of labor, equipment, and manufacturing facilities that we have that would be a pretty easy pivot to supporting the front line and health care,” says Chris Meyer, CEO of George P. Johnson. “Obviously, there’s also a goal to protect jobs in the events industry. But first and foremost, we had outreach from organizations like FEMA and municipalities saying, ‘We’re trying to find a solution to this.’”
By this point, Johnson had already experienced the cancellations and postponements of Google Next, IBM Think, Cisco Live, and Adobe TechSummit, a wave that started with Facebook calling off its F8 in late February. But once the three companies saw the need and opportunity for their services, Meyer says it was easy getting more and more people on board. “It was just kind of grass roots. Whether they’re competitors in our space or industry partners, everyone quickly came together with a singular focus of ‘How can we help?’ It didn’t take a lot of work.”
Hospital bed booths are set up on March 27 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City as part of an effort to fight coronavirus cases. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez—Getty Images
Beyond erecting temporary structures that can manage the flow of thousands of people in confined areas and adding the necessary technological infrastructure to handle power and communications needs, the members of Live for Life were also adept at knowing how to deal with local governments’ needs. Those bodies, in turn, were able to help fast-track the necessary permits and approvals. That cleared the way for the event companies to build patient rooms and drive-thru structures, as well as producing face masks and other medical equipment with the help of 3D printing.
The companies have also had to adapt to new safety procedures in both how they’re protecting their own workers and ensuring the safety of patients and hospital employees.
“We’re working really closely with the CDC and other medical organizations to follow their guidelines,” says Meyer. “A lot of that has to do with, first, staff: How do you make sure the staff is healthy? There’s guidance relevant to health checks that we have to go through. As an example, when we use one of the fabrication facilities, many of our industry partners have to check in, be tested, and fill out a form that asks a series of questions provided by the medical authorities. Once we have these facilities up and running, it’s intense guidelines relevant to continued cleaning, not only of individuals with hand wipes and sanitizer but also every part of the venue that could be touched. Ultimately, we’re trying to follow the guidelines that are issued by the CDC, and those are evolving on a daily basis.”
The projects are often divvied up among Live for Life members based on location. So, for example, Johnson’s physical presence in Detroit and working relationship with local unions and governments makes it the ideal organization to handle the needs of Michigan, one of the hardest-hit states in the crisis. So far, FEMA has been very receptive to all its offers of assistance and, according to Meyer, concerns about getting compensated for its efforts have not slowed the group down.
“The consortium members have all agreed to do this at cost, just to keep people employed. That’s the first step,” he says. “The second step is making sure that we will get paid, and there are also risks we have to consider, i.e., equipment. If we’re building out hospital rooms, when will that equipment come back? Will it come back? Do you want it back? How will it be sanitized, etc., etc.? Right now, for the [projects] that have gone through the government, we have been given assurance of payment. We all know that sometimes it takes a long time, but we also know the government will pay. So everyone’s confident, and I think the organizations that are part of the coalition also realize if they’re taking too much financial risk, they’re not pressured into doing this.”
For Live for Life’s members, there’s also the benefit of seeing how they’ll need to rethink their approaches to events for the future, once the pandemic is under control. “For us, and I think most people in our space, we’re looking at 2020 as a wash. We’re all saying, ‘How do we do what we can now and prepare for the rebound?’” Meyer says. “There’s going to be different guidelines that have to be followed. We’re obviously going to start to see the economic impact further, as publicly traded companies’ earnings come out. You’re already starting to see the corporate spend in marketing be reduced. A lot of stuff with social distancing, you’re going to see a lot of that applied when we’re talking about setting people a number of feet apart from each other. The hygiene, health, and safety protocols that are applied inside of meeting venues, convention centers, etc., will be updated. A lot of what were large-scale events will have fewer people at them, with a much more robust digital extension of that type of experience. But people gathering together, it’s an innate human need, so I think it will come back, as it always does.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How movie theaters can make a comeback after the coronavirus pandemic
—What to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more while social distancing
—When jazz musicians aren’t live-streaming owing to coronavirus, they’re scrambling to rebook lost gigs
—Hollywood showrunners assist the assistants amid coronavirus pandemic
—The coronavirus pandemic is changing broadcast and streaming TV as we know it
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fortune--2020-04-21--Google, Andrew Yang, and Ariana Grande back a new effort to send an extra $1,000 to 100,000 U.S. fam

Google, Andrew Yang, and Ariana Grande back a new effort to send an extra $1,000 to 100,000 U.S. families in need

Co-creating the world of inclusion that we want to come next

A broad coalition of tech startups, charities, and public figures today announced the launch of Project 100, a drive to distribute $100 million in privately-donated aid to 100,000 of the low-income families hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The project has raised more than $55 million of its goal and is already distributing the funds, with nearly 5,000 families so far each receiving $1,000.
Major donors so far include Blue Meridian partners, an anti-poverty philanthropy; and Google.org, Google’s philanthropic wing. Google.org, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Flourish Ventures jointly donated $3 million to the fund on April 14. Public figures are also donating, including Ariana Grande, Stacey Abrams, Andrew Yang, and Stephen Colbert.
Project 100 is being run by three groups: Propel, a financial technology startup that helps the recipients of food aid in the U.S. manage their SNAP benefits, is running the application process. Educational nonprofit Stand for Children is working with recipients directly, and GiveDirectly, a nonprofit focused on direct cash donations to the needy, which has primarily operated in the developing world, is running the fundraising and distributing some of the funds through a partnership with PayPal.
The program will impact only a tiny portion of the most needy families in America. While the goal of Project 100 is to send assistance to 100,000 families, more than 38 million Americans received SNAP benefits in 2019 alone—a number that is likely to climb dramatically in 2020.
Applications for the program will be offered to users of FreshEBT, Propel’s benefits-management app. A random selection of users who meet certain unemployment criteria will be invited to apply. Some of the Project 100 funds will be earmarked by geography—$2 million of Google’s donation, for example, will go to families in San Francisco.
Propel has run user surveys showing just how direly needed the extra help is. According to Propel CEO Jimmy Chen, 7 out of every 8 EBT recipients with a job on March 1 had their hours cut dramatically or lost their positions entirely. Meanwhile, only one third of the app’s users have received a government stimulus payment. The other two thirds, Chen says, likely either didn’t file 2019 taxes or don’t have a bank account for the IRS to deposit funds into.
Those delayed checks could have dire consequences for those living at the economic margins, and mirror massive failures in the U.S. unemployment system and small business emergency loan programs. Project 100 is working to make receiving payments easier, in a way that might serve as a future model for the government: Recipients can receive their funds via a Moneygram redemption code or deposit into a PayPal account.
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More personal finance coverage from Fortune:
—What to do if you can’t pay your bills this month
—Stimulus checks are depositing: How people are spending the money
—Couldn’t track your stimulus check? Errors and long waits plague IRS portal rollout
—What you should know about mortgage forbearance and skipping payments
—Everything you need to know about furloughs—and what they mean for workers
—Freelancers and independent contractors can now apply for SBA Paycheck Protection Program loans. What you need to know
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-04-21--HBO Max will join the streaming market when it launches May 27

AT&T Inc. has set a launch date of May 27 for its HBO Max service, marking the third major streaming rollout in less than two months as media giants try to capitalize on booming demand for video.
HBO Max will debut in the U.S. before rolling out to Europe and Latin America in the months and years ahead, the company said Tuesday. AT&T is spending a couple of billion dollars a year on HBO Max, its biggest initiative for the WarnerMedia division since the business was acquired for $85 billion almost two years ago.
The service is attempting to build on the 35 million people who already pay for HBO in the U.S., and the millions more who pay for some version overseas. HBO Max will include all current and future original series, as well as a catalog of thousands of older movies and TV shows like “The West Wing,” “Friends” and “South Park.”
The HBO network has served as the gold standard in quality for the past two decades, routinely earning the most nominations of any TV network at the Emmy Awards and producing cultural touchstones such as “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and “Game of Thrones.” Netflix Inc. has often cited HBO as the model for its early streaming service.
But HBO has been slow to adapt to the shift of viewers online. Its stand-alone streaming service, HBO Now, has a fraction of the customer base of Netflix, Hulu or Disney+, which launched late last year.
Walt Disney Co. is now seen as the leader among major media companies trying to embrace streaming. Disney+ signed up more than 50 million customers in its first five months, buoyed by an aggressive marketing campaign that plastered airports, bus stops and TV networks with ads.
The Covid-19 lockdown has made streaming services more desirable, but it’s also forced companies to change their marketing plans.
Comcast Corp.’s Peacock had a subdued debut last week, with the service only available to some of the company’s own cable subscribers. A much bigger promotion, which was to coincide with the since-postponed Olympic Games and summer film releases, has been pushed into next year.
With HBO Max, AT&T is making its own adjustments. Advertising that would have been spent on billboards and live events is being shifted to online and social media. HBO put off live film and TV premieres, some of which were scheduled for events such as the South by Southwest and Tribeca film festivals, which have been canceled. HBO Max also is unable to finish some of the shows it planned to have at launch because production is suspended.
Even so, the global health crisis has had a positive effect on most streaming services. Online video consumption has surged as billions of people are stuck at home with more time on their hands and less to do. Use of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and Amazon.com Inc.’s video service have all soared, according to analysts.
–With assistance from Christopher Palmeri.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Mrs. America designers revived a ’70s feminist showdown
—Peacock’s early preview kicks off, with national launch still on track for July
—How movie theaters can make a comeback after the coronavirus pandemic
—After Fleabag, Vicky Jones was ready to Run toward a tricky HBO thriller-comedy
—Tigertail director Alan Yang on making the past not “a memory, but a beautiful dream”
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fortune--2020-04-21--The pandemic is fast-tracking the adoption of smarter, stronger A.I.

This is the web version of Eye on A.I., Fortune’s weekly newsletter covering artificial intelligence and business. To get it delivered weekly to your in-box, sign up here.
What’s the new normal going to look like? It’s a vexing question for data scientists and engineers working on artificial intelligence systems.
So many of these systems are designed to learn from historical data. But, as I’ve noted in previous Fortune Eye on A.I. newsletters, when the present stops looking like the past, these A.I. systems can get into serious trouble.
What’s more, it’s unlikely that the future—when lockdowns ease and business resumes, but perhaps with some social distancing and travel restrictions still in place—will resemble today, either. So how can A.I. software be trained to function correctly with all this changed data?
I put this question to Ahmer Inam, the chief A.I. officer for Pactera Edge, a Redmond, Washington-based technology consulting and services firm that spun out from Chinese IT company Pactera Technology International in January. It helps businesses, including many Fortune 500 companies, implement A.I.
Inam answered that one way to make sure an A.I. system doesn’t run amok is to ensure a “human-in-the-loop” is always reviewing its recommendations and making final decisions. Today’s A.I. systems function best when supporting human decisions, he says, not fully automating them.
Humans should also keep a close watch on the data that A.I. software is being fed. That’s important even when there isn’t a pandemic. “Model drift,” in which data gradually changes over time, is “a common problem even with standard business data,” he says. “The dynamism of the business itself causes that.”
But another possible solution is to use a different kind of machine learning altogether. Instead of supervised learning, in which an algorithm learns from historical data, Inam says businesses could use reinforcement learning, in which an algorithm learns from experience, usually in a simulator.
This is the kind of A.I. that researchers have successfully used in the past five years to teach software to beat humans at games, such as Go and poker. But businesses have been slow to adopt these techniques for a number of reasons.
Building a reliable simulator can be expensive and time-consuming. The level of machine learning expertise needed to successfully design and train a reinforcement learning algorithm tends to be greater, and that talent is in short supply. The amount of computing power needed to train an algorithm using reinforcement learning can be massive and costly too.
Inam says the expense and time, however, are well worth it. Using a simulator, you can expose an algorithm to a wide range of potential scenarios and teach it how to handle them all. The result is a much more robust A.I., ready for whatever the world is going to throw at it.
Inam has built simulators to see how a coffee shop chain might be able to mitigate climate change’s affects on the reliability and pricing of coffee supplies. In another case, he simulated how a hurricane could impact an automotive retailer’s regional sales. More recently, he built a simulator to help a logistics company optimize its routing. The project took six months, he says, but it ultimately enabled the company to save millions in fuel and labor costs.
Inam thinks the coronavirus pandemic is likely to accelerate companies’ adoption of these more sophisticated A.I. techniques. “It’s fast-tracking adoption of stronger A.I.,” he says. Add that to the list of the pandemic’s unanticipated effects.
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This story has been updated to correct the relationship between Pactera Edge and Pactera Technology International.
A.I. IN THE NEWS
Self-driving startup settles lawsuit with Tesla. Zoox, a self-driving car startup in Foster City, California, has agreed to settle a lawsuit Tesla filed against it last year. The electric car giant had alleged four of its former employees had stolen confidential documents and trade secrets related to its logistics and warehouse operations and had taken them to Zoox. As part of the settlement, Zoox admitted to this allegation and agreed to pay Tesla an undisclosed amount as well as submit to audits to ensure Tesla's information wasn't being used, Reuters reported.
Covid-19 anxiety is getting worse, A.I. reveals. Italian artificial intelligence company Expert Systems and Spanish political research firm Sociometrica have teamed up and applied natural language processing and sentiment analysis to 63,000 English-language social media posts. They found that, while positive sentiments have surged at moments, overall, fear and anxiety have continued to grow. You can see more of their analysis here.
Coursera uses A.I. to help universities offer online courses. The online learning company Coursera unveiled an A.I.-powered tool called "CourseMatch" to help universities use its service. The system ingests a university's entire course catalogue and then uses natural language processing to match each course to the five Coursera offerings that most closely align with that particular course description, according to a company blog post.
Amazon Alexa’s reading voice gets better. Amazon says it has enhanced the reading voice of popular digital assistant Alexa, creating a new speaking style. Amazon, according to a report in The Verge, has trained the digital assistant to read longer passages more like human speakers, adding "more natural pauses" between paragraphs or when the speaker switches during a dialogue. The function is currently only available in the U.S.
EYE ON A.I. TALENT
DBLX, an employee engagement startup based in Stoke on Trent, U.K., has hired Dan Macklin as chief technology officer. Macklin had previously been part of the U.K. innovations team at Amazon Web Services.
Jvion, an Atlanta-based company implementing A.I. in clinical settings, has named Jay Deady as its chief executive officer. Deady had previously been CEO of A.I. company Recondo.
Patriot One Technologies Inc., a Toronto company that uses artificial intelligence to help law enforcement agencies and the defense sector detect threats based on a variety of sensors and imagery data, has named Dietmar Wennemer as its chief operating officer. Wennemer had previously been chief product officer at Aeryon Labs, a drone company.
EYE ON A.I. RESEARCH
New specialist data sets for self-driving and satellite computer vision are out. Several companies are publicly releasing formerly proprietary datasets so that other A.I. researchers can use them to build potentially useful applications.
First, Audi released a dataset of 400,000 images recorded on highways, country roads, and cities in the south of Germany along with accompanying sensor data. The images were recorded in a variety of different weather conditions. Audi also released other data recorded simultaneously with the images: three dimensional point clouds, bounding boxes, segmentation data and data on what vehicle did in response to those conditions. Other researchers could use this dataset, which Audi calls A2D2, to build new computer vision systems or enhance existing self-driving training datasets. Audi's self-driving rival Waymo previously made public a very large dataset.
Meanwhile, a nonprofit consortia called SpaceNet, whose backers include C.I.A.-affiliated venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, Capella Space, Maxar Technologies, German Aerospace Center, the Intel AI Lab and Amazon Web Services, has released a large dataset of images of the port of Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the surrounding area. The data, generated using satellite-based optical cameras and synthetic aperture radar, is extremely high-resolution, with precision down to less than a meter. SpaceNet has announced a competition around the data, asking researchers to "automatically extract building footprints with computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms" using a combination of both the optical and radar data. The resulting A.I., SpaceNet says, could have uses in helping humanitarian groups and emergency services respond to disasters. Unspoken is that it could also be pretty useful to intelligence agencies.
FORTUNE ON A.I.
More surveillance and less privacy will be the new normal after the coronavirus pandemic—by David Meyer
Researchers working on ‘contact tracing’ say they welcome Apple and Google’s help—by David Z. Morris
The coronavirus crisis is fintech’s biggest test yet—and greatest opportunity to go mainstream—by Jen Wieczner
These robot-powered warehouses could save grocers—but first they need to survive the coronavirus pandemic—by Jeremy Kahn
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
BRAIN FOOD
In the opening of this newsletter, Pactera's Ahmer Inam told me that he thinks the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate the adoption of more sophisticated forms of A.I. Will it do the same for our embrace of robots?
Noted futurist Martin Ford thinks so. He tells the BBC that Covid-19 is changing our calculus about the advantages and disadvantages of human interaction and is going to "really open up new opportunities for automation." The fact that some form of social distancing will likely need to remain in place until a vaccine is widely available provides plenty of time and incentive for companies to speed up the deployment of robots.
In South Korea, robots are already being used to scan people's temperatures and distribute hand sanitizer, the BBC says, and a Danish company that makes robots that disinfect surfaces is doing brisk business. Businesses may now advance their deployment of robots that move items around warehouses and help prepare food. I recently talked to folks at IBM about some of their efforts to use A.I. to assist in situations such as helping elderly people to live independently.
But I am less sure about the pandemic is an unconditional win for robotics—the coronavirus may also have revealed many of the shortcomings of today's automation. Today's robotic systems have nowhere near the flexibility and resiliency of human workers: In a crisis, it is relatively easy to train a human factory worker to assemble parts for a ventilator instead of a carburetor, or redeploy a marketing executive to stack shelves in a supermarket. We are general-purpose machines. Robots—at least today's versions—are not. What do you think?


fortune--2020-04-21--Helping people get some sleep in anxious times will help underserved communities too

In ordinary times, sleep is essential to every aspect of a person’s well-being. In extraordinary times of uncertainty, anxiety, and stress, getting the sleep we need is more important than ever. Sleep is the foundation of both a strong immune system and psychological resilience—the very things we need to navigate this pandemic.
And yet with the COVID-19 crisis, a good night’s sleep has never been harder to come by. Increased stress, the “loss of daytime structure,” and too much screen time are cutting into sleep, writes Lisa Medalie, a behavioral sleep medicine specialist at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Google searches for insomnia hit a record high in early April. And many people are seeing an uptick in nightmares, brought on by stress and anxiety.
At the same time, growing data is showing that Americans in underserved communities are disproportionately affected by the virus. Newark, N.J.—where Audible moved its global headquarters in 2007—leads the state in the COVID-19 spread, and like other economically disadvantaged cities, historical precedent indicates that job losses and business destruction are destined to be far higher in Newark than in other areas.
Many of our neighbors in Newark have underlying health conditions like hypertension, asthma, and diabetes that make them particularly vulnerable to developing serious coronavirus-related symptoms. Furthermore, many tend to work essential jobs that require in-person attendance, and thus have an increased chance of exposure.
Sleep’s deep connection to health and wellness and the inequitable impact of COVID-19 in the urban core can indeed be societally and programmatically connected. Numerous studies have suggested that socioeconomically disadvantaged communities are more likely to experience sleep patterns associated with adverse health outcomes. The so-called sleep gap and disproportionate medical and economic impacts of the coronavirus both illustrate many of the larger inequality indices we see and can measure across the country.
This is why Audible and Thrive Global have come together, along with the strong voices of Sean “Diddy” Combs, Nick Jonas, and others, to introduce a collection of free audio experiences—from guided meditations and bedtime stories to sound baths and microsteps for better sleep—designed to help people rest during this difficult time.
Beyond helping people navigate an historically anxious time, we’ll also be sustaining and creating restaurant jobs in Newark and providing meals that will be delivered to Newark’s most vulnerable citizens—as well as to the city’s frontline health care workers. Audible and Newark allies—including famed chefs Marcus Samuelsson and José Andrés—recently launched Newark Working Kitchens (NWK) to fund local restaurants to help feed as many frontline workers and local residents impacted by the pandemic as possible. Audible has already committed to purchasing 100,000 meals from a network of relit restaurants, and we, along with our partners, plan to fund more meals and jobs following the launch of the sleep solution.
Thrive Global, like Audible, has pivoted its resources and energy into providing its partners, users, and communities with the resources and tools needed to take care of themselves and others. Thrive launched #FirstRespondersFirst with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the CAA Foundation. Through this initiative, Thrive is providing those on the front lines not just with personal protective equipment, but also with childcare, food, mental health support, and other resources for demographically and socially diverse workforces.
Joining forces to create a powerful sleep solution at a time when sleep is most crucial, while also partnering with nonprofits we helped create to support the most vulnerable communities in Newark, came about because we stepped back to brainstorm new visions of the possible. It’s great to see these initiatives already having an immediate social impact while also laying a foundation for continued impact long after the pandemic.
Entrepreneurs and other corporate leaders everywhere can rethink and redeploy their capacity to launch innovative products, understand customers at a deep and often metrics-driven behavioral level, and also leverage their natural instinct—if they are successful—to discern how investment can generate the best outputs to make a difference.
We decided to write this together to encourage other business leaders—particularly those who see themselves as entrepreneurs capable of working backward from big visions of the possible versus serving as professional managers—to step back and imagine new ways to connect the dots and make a bigger impact.
The coronavirus pandemic has shocked our individual and collective systems. By imagining creative responses to these unprecedented circumstances, recognizing our deep interconnectedness, and committing to our health and the health of our communities, we can emerge from this challenging historical moment together and stronger than before.
Arianna Huffington is founder and CEO of Thrive Global.
Don Katz is founder and executive chairman of Audible.
More opinion in Fortune:
—To fight tomorrow’s pandemic, we need to think like the military today
—Prescription drug costs are spiraling, but price controls are the wrong solution
—The Fed may have fundamentally altered the nature of risk in the stock market
—Why the U.S. needs a new corporate bailout structure—one that doesn’t rely on loans
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus
Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily


fortune--2020-04-21--Baseball fans sue MLB and teams over ticket money

A pair of fans in New York sued Major League Baseball, Commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 teams, asking for their money back for tickets and for certification of class-action status.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by Matthew Ajzenman, who said he bought a partial season plan for more than 20 Mets games; and Susan Terry-Bazer, who said she purchased six tickets for a May 9 game at Yankee Stadium against Boston.
“Baseball fans are stuck with expensive and unusable tickets for unplayable games in the midst of this economic crisis,” the lawsuit said. “Under the pretext of `postponing’ games, at the directive of MLB, teams and ticket merchants are refusing to issue refunds for games which are not going to be played as scheduled — if ever.”
Ajzenman said his Mets plan cost $1,730 and he made a first payment to the team of about $317 last year. Terry-Bazer said she paid $926 to Ticketmaster and planned to take her grandson to the Red Sox-Yankees game.
Ticketmaster, Stubhub, Live Nation and Last Minute Transactions are among the defendants. The caption on the first page included Tampa Bay Devil Rays Ltd. — “Devil” was dropped from the team’s nickname after the 2007 season.
“The defendants continue to retain enormous profits from tickets sold for the 2020 MLB season at the expense of fans’ financial hardship,” the suit said.
Fans asked for “full restitution, an accounting of all MLB tickets sold for the 2020 season (including season tickets, single game purchases, and public seat licenses), a declaratory judgment that defendants’ conduct of continuing to sell tickets for the 2020 MLB regular season violates California law, as well as a disgorgement of profits from tickets sold during the 2020 MLB season.”
They allege violations of California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act and Unfair Competition Law and of civil conspiracy.
Opening day on March 26 was pushed back until mid-May at the earliest after a national emergency was declared due to the new coronavirus pandemic.
MLB said it is awaiting government and medical direction, and it does not know when the season can begin. The league and the players’ union have discussed the possibility of playing at neutral sites or in empty ballparks, but no decisions have been made.
MLB, the Mets and Yankees did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Big Pharma has the chance to come to the world’s rescue
—American companies laid off 22 million in the past month. Europe chose a different path
—PayPal CEO says coronavirus is giving his business “a tremendous surge”
—Everything you need to know about furloughs and what they mean for workers
—Filing for unemployment benefits? What to know before you start your claim
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—WATCH: The U.S. Postal Service is in deep financial trouble. Here’s why
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-04-21--Everyone is Zooming, but is this even good business for Zoom?

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.
Warren Buffett’s famous line that “only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked” has been coming up a lot lately. He was referring to tough times exposing investors who didn’t particularly know what they were doing. I’ve been hearing it in terms of crises focusing attention in organizations on who produces compared with who complains about having to produce.
I thought about the notion of what shows under a bright light while reading Michal Lev-Ram’s thorough and colorful feature about Zoom in the new issue of Fortune, which Aaron mentioned last week. I happen to know Lev-Ram became interested in Zoom back when the San Jose, Calif., company merely was lauded for having had a successful 2019 IPO at a time higher-profile deals had sputtered. Zoom was an investment darling a few months ago; it was not a global phenomenon.
Now, though we all know about Zoom, most of us haven’t paid the company a dime. Not only had Zoom not set out to be a consumer favorite, evidence is growing that hosting Zoomtail hours, birthday parties, and Passover seders isn’t a particularly good business for Zoom. The company doesn’t break out its paid versus non-paid users. In other words, it’s tough right now to know how Zoom’s business has benefited from its quick jump from 10 million to 200 million daily users.
More users are nearly always better, provided a company can serve them. As Lev-Ram writes, Zoom’s laggard competitors certainly would like to pick up its overflow. I was caught off guard by the performance of RingCentral, for example, whose stock has done about as well as Zoom’s over the past year and jumped 7% Monday on a down day for the market. (Fortune uses RingCentral internally to communicate.)
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Zoom’s current quarter ends in a couple of weeks, and some time after that we’ll see the true impact of the pandemic on its business. We won’t have to wait that long to find out if more people are watching Netflix because they are stuck at home or if they’re cancelling the service because they are strapped for cash. Netflix reports earnings today.
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Save the date
Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Pacific/1:00 p.m. Eastern I’m holding a 40-minute livestreamed conversation with Fortune’s Erika Fry about her article, Saving a City: How Seattle’s corporate giants banded together to flatten the curve. We’ll do some comparing and contrasting with San Francisco, another city that has handled the pandemic well.
I’ll take your live questions for either one of us via chat. Register here to join the free call.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini. On Wall Street, it's also time to ponder Buffett's adage about the tide going out. The first of the tech giants reported on Monday and was not naked, but perhaps a bit underdressed. IBM said its first quarter revenue slipped 3% to $17.6 billion and new CEO Arvind Krishna withdrew the company's annual forecast, adding this scare quote: "For the next few months, we have to be focused on the stability of the business and be sure we preserve our liquidity and balance sheet." IBM's stock price, previously down 10% in 2020, lost another 5% in pre-market trading on Tuesday.
Don't touch that dial. With the streaming wars heating up like never before, Comcast bolstered its offerings by buying Walmart's online TV and movie service Vudu and placing it into NBCUniversal. No purchase price was disclosed for the sale. Apple meanwhile expanded its app store and services to 20 new countries, including Cameroon, Morocco, and Serbia.
If you feel that the bare minimum is enough, then okay. After Google and Apple announced their contact tracing software solution earlier this month, Microsoft on Monday published a list of industry principles for protecting privacy in contact tracing. The principles include collecting a minimal amount of data, minimizing data sharing, and deleting data when no longer needed. Meanwhile, France says it needs Apple to relax some of the privacy rules on iOS for its national contact tracing app to work.
Zoombombing. With millions of workers forced out of their offices due to coronavirus, Fortune and Adobe polled chief information officers about how the remote work experiment is going. Asked what has proved to be the biggest challenge in their companies’ remote work, only 20% of CIOs said hardware and 21% tech tools. The real issue: 53% said it's hardest getting their employees to effectively communicate with one another.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Zoom video conferences are all the rage–we've just written two of the last three newsletter essays about the trend. But while much business can get done via online meetings, much is also lost. Author and tech critic Michael Sacasas has a new essay outlining his "theory of Zoom fatigue." It's a fascinating read.
In face-to-face conversation...while our conscious attention is focused on words and their meaning, our fuller perceptive capabilities are engaged in reading the whole environment. In conversation, then, each person becomes a part of a field of communication that includes, but is not limited to verbal expression.
The problem with video-conferencing is that the body is but isn’t there. This means that our minds are at least partly frustrated as they deploy their non-conscious repertoire of perceptive skills. The situation is more like a face-to-face encounter than most any other medium, but, for that very reason, it frustrates us because it is not quite the same. I suppose we might think of it as something like a conversational uncanny valley. The full range of what the mind assumes should be available to it when it perceives a body, simply isn’t there.
ON THE MOVE
European software giant SAP eliminated its co-CEO structure and named Christian Klein as sole CEO. Jennifer Morgan, named co-CEO just in October, will leave the company at the end of the month...Spark Capital general partner Megan Quinn is joining augmented reality gaming company Niantic. The former Google and Square exec will be COO, reporting to CEO John Hanke, who she worked with at Google...David Thacker is returning to VC firm Greylock Partners, which he left a decade ago, after stints at LinkedIn and Google. He was most recently VP of product management & user experience at Google...And finally, in what seems like the "Departing Google" edition of "On the Move," John Martinis, the company's head of quantum computing hardware, resigned after being reassigned to an advisory role, Wired reports.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Why flying taxi makers are hitting turbulence By Jennifer Alsever
Q&A: PayPal CEO Dan Schulman says coronavirus is giving his business ‘a tremendous surge’ By Jen Wieczner
Focusing on fevers: Thermal-imaging tech is on the rise. Can it help fight the coronavirus? By Aaron Pressman
Quibi’s launch: What the critics and analysts are saying (so far) By Aric Jenkins
AMD CEO Lisa Su on supercomputing and leading a global company during the coronavirus By Aaron Pressman
The Coronavirus Economy: A new CEO on transitioning to a remote workforce based in Italy and the U.S. By Rachel King
Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing By Katherine Dunn
(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
I've had a good side gig the past few years as a professional kvetcher about the poor quality of Apple keyboards. Those days appear to be over now. After Apple improved the keyboards on its laptops, it's now out with an amazing deck for the iPad Pro, too. Reviewer John Gruber says the Magic keyboard for iPad Pro is "utterly brilliant" and "feels seamlessly natural." YouTuber Marques Brownlee also likes it, but says he'd still rather just use a laptop. We have one on order at the Pressman household. I'll let you know how it works out.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-04-21--Sonos enters the content business with a new radio streaming service

Sonos, the wireless home-audio company, is getting into the content game. The company on Tuesday announced the launch of Sonos Radio, a free, ad-supported radio streaming service now available worldwide via an update to the Sonos app.
The radio service marks the Santa Barbara company’s first foray into original programming. (Streaming services like Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music remain accessible on the Sonos app.) Sonos describes its own service as a “holistic and cohesive way to explore radio” that features more than 60,000 radio stations. Among them are 30-plus genre stations based on popularity with Sonos listeners; an ad-free Sonos Sound System station “featuring new and well-known music, behind-the-scenes stories, and guest artist radio hours”; and ad-free artist stations curated by musicians like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, and Talking Heads’ David Byrne.
Sonos says nearly half of listening time on its devices—which are in 10 million homes globally—is spent on radio. “This is just a beginning as we work to deliver services that provide our customers a better experience, and provide our music streaming service partners an opportunity to highlight their best content,” CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement.
Hardware is hard
Since its founding in 2002, Sonos has built a reputation for making premium wireless speakers with high-quality sound, sleek design, and multi-room support. But the company’s position has been challenged by increased competition as tech giants Amazon, Google, and Apple expand deeper into the market with voice-activated “smart” speakers.
Consider: At the time of its initial public offering in mid 2018, Sonos had sold more than 19 million units. About six months later, Amazon revealed that more than 100 million Alexa-powered devices had been sold—just four years after the introduction of its first Echo smart speaker. An eMarketer report from February 2020 found that nearly 70% of all U.S. smart speaker owners own an Amazon Echo device; the closest competitor is Google, with about 32% of market share. (Another 18% use one of the “other” brands: Apple HomePod, Sonos One, or Harman Kardon Invoke. The percentage tops 100% because some smart speaker owners have more than one brand, the report said.)
The stiff competition in home audio has battered Sonos’ stock price. Since August 2018, its share value has dropped 58% from $20.95 a share to about $8.70. (Sonos continues to deliver strong financial results, though. In its first fiscal quarter 2020, the company reported record revenues of $562 million, beating estimates.) Various analysts have warned of the company’s competing interest with frenemies—Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant are built into some Sonos products—as well as general market volatility and the occasional public relations blunder.
Content isn’t much easier
At first blush, Sonos’ entry into radio puts it in competition with its vast collection of content partners. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, Deezer, Pandora, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Google Play Music, and YouTube Music all vie for listeners’ attention on Sonos devices. What’s more, many of those services are more cheaply acquired elsewhere: Amazon’s third-generation Echo Dot and Google’s Home Mini each retail for $40; the lowest-priced Sonos model, called One SL, sells for $129.
But Sonos—which has never targeted occasional audio fans and has long appealed to audiophiles and upmarket consumers who delighted in the company’s easy-to-use multi-room audio support—isn’t quite turning into an overnight media company. When Sonos filed its Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018, it declared: “Our system is not—and never will be—an entry gate into a walled garden. We’re deeply committed to keeping Sonos open to every voice assistant, streaming service, and company that wants to build on our platform.”
That may be why Sonos’ new radio service aims to feature partner content. But it doesn’t quite explain the company’s push into original programming generated “by a team of curators, DJs, and artists.” (Its signature Sonos Sound System station is recorded in a newly built studio in its flagship retail store in New York City.) Does Sonos believe it can out-Spotify Spotify? It’s unlikely. But a premium listening experience may help the company justify its relatively lofty pricing.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The verdict on Quibi (so far)
—Why Mrs. America and the 1970s fight over the Equal Rights Amendment are more relevant than ever
—Coronavirus, continued: How concert venues are handling ticket refunds
—The best streaming services in 2020
—NBC’s Peacock streaming service: On track for a July 2020 launch


fortune--2020-04-21--What it’s like to be 1 of 3 women leading a Fortune 500 tech company

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! New Zealand will ease its lockdown restrictions, street harassment persists, even during a pandemic, and we talk to the rare woman leading a Fortune 500 tech company. Have a productive Tuesday.
– Sitting down with Su. If you’re a regular reader, you have certainly heard us bemoan the small number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 (that total now stands at 35). But the number is even more alarming when you narrow it down to those leading technology companies—three.
Lisa Su, an engineer with a PhD from MIT, who leads chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, represents one third of that total. For Fortune‘s most recent issue, Su sat down with our colleague Aaron Pressman (co-author of the delightful tech newsletter Data Sheet) to talk about how she managed to turn the once-floundering company around, why she believes AMD’s sweet spot is in powering high performance applications like supercomputing, A.I., and gaming, and what the heck an exaflop is (spoiler: it’s computing 1 quintillion floating point calculations per second—or a 1 followed by 18 zeros.)
She also addresses her status as the rare woman to head a major tech player, stressing the need to give women more opportunities in the industry and to push for more gender diversity in technical leadership. That said, she doesn’t sugarcoat the reality of running—and staffing—a Fortune 500 technology company: “At the end of the day it’s always about, Let’s get the best person in the job,” says Su.
And because there is no such thing as a business that hasn’t been impacted by the pandemic, Aaron talked to Su about logistics of pivoting 10,000 employees to a work-from-home model and guarding a global supply chain against the coronavirus-imposed chaos that’s rocking so many tech and manufacturing companies.
For Su, it’s meant making sure AMD is resilient enough to weather this crisis—and hopefully, the next one too:
“It’s having redundancy in your supply chain. It’s having redundancy in your engineering teams. It’s building the notion of, hey, you have your contingency plans as things change,” she says. “And, in some sense, it’s building a company that can withstand lots of different things related to the environment we’re operating in.”
Read Aaron’s full interview—edited by yours truly!—here.
Finally, if you’re interested in getting a more behind-the-scenes look at covering business in the age of the coronavirus, I’d invite you to tune in to a Zoom call this Wednesday at 1 pm ET. Fortune‘s Erika Fry and Adam Lashinsky will talk about how Seattle (the focus of Erika’s latest story), San Francisco (Adam’s home and the subject of his February feature), and the tech communities of both cities have attempted to address the pandemic. You can join the call here. See you there!
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Leading ladies. As New Zealand plans to ease its lockdown next week—after seeing the results of its early action—some wonder: is Jacinda Ardern the most effective leader on the planet? Taiwan's President President Tsai Ing-wen and Sint Maarten Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs also get a close look here. It's worth watching Jacobs's address to her citizens: "Simply. Stop. Moving. If you do not have the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal, eat oats, sardines.”
- Winging it. A Wall Street Journal outlines more of the troubles facing The Wing in recent months—before and amid the pandemic. One new report: a front desk receptionist was told she was ineligible for paid maternity leave because she hadn't signed up for short-term disability as part of her insurance plan. Shortly after, CEO Audrey Gelman appeared on the cover of Inc. during her own pregnancy. The Wing says all employees now receive 14 weeks paid maternity leave. Wall Street Journal
- Fisher's advice. On today's episode of the podcast Leadership Next, Fortune CEO Alan Murray talks to Eileen Fisher, founder of the eponymous clothing brand. Fisher tells us about working her way through college—her dad would only pay for her brother's education—and starting a company with no idea how to do it. Listen here: Fortune
- Tune in. And for more listening, check out the podcast Voices of Resilience from the nonprofit Vital Voices. Women—from small-business owners like makeup artist Takia Ross to nurse Beemnet Taye—share leadership lessons during the pandemic. Vital Voices
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Banking and asset management vet Elena Bittante joins the board of Axyon AI.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Not the time, guys. What could make street harassment even worse than usual? When it happens during your one daily trip outside during a pandemic! Some women in the U.K. have noticed an uptick in catcalling, speculating that emptier streets mean they're more likely to be singled out. HuffPost
- Jobs report. The latest installments of Fortune's series "The Coronavirus Economy" feature Mary Beech, new CEO of the shoe brand Sarah Flint, and LaToya Gaines, a New York clinical psychologist. Beech, former Kate Spade CMO, talks about transitioning a team to remote work when you've only been in charge for three weeks, while Gaines is helping her clients cope with the pressures of the pandemic.
- Neighbor to neighbor. During the pandemic, users have flocked to Nextdoor to coordinate everything from grocery delivery to cheering for health care workers. CEO Sarah Friar—or "chief neighbor," as her LinkedIn profile identifies her—is tasked with continuing to monetize that flurry of activity. Financial Times
ON MY RADAR
'Planning' your pregnancy has never been more of a myth Glamour
Brittany Howard's transformation The New Yorker
Harry and Meghan will no longer deal with major British tabloids CNBC
Is it unethical to get pregnant right now? Advice for the coronavirus era BuzzFeed
PARTING WORDS
"I live in a world of perpetual tradeoffs. I can no longer operate at 100% capacity like I’m used to as a CEO, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a colleague."
-Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud on running the company during the pandemic


fortune--2020-04-21--As Virgin wobbles, Richard Branson looks to use his private island as collateral

Necker Island has been Richard Branson’s personal fiefdom for 40 years. But as his Virgin-branded businesses are battered by the coronavirus crisis, the billionaire is turning to his Caribbean hideaway for cash.
Branson wrote to staff Monday saying he plans to “raise as much money against the island as possible” as the pandemic lays waste to industries where Virgin competes, including airlines, hotels and cruises.
While it’s true that Branson has been hit hard by the economic fallout from Covid-19, the move to put his own home on the line is also a result of the lukewarm response to his pleas for government bailouts of Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. and Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd. The Australian company collapsed into administration on Tuesday.
Decades of media-friendly exploits, from attempts at world records to glitzy airline route launches to a bid to establish the world’s first space-tourism company, have become a millstone as states balk at coming to the aid of one of the world’s best-known entrepreneurs.
Coloring that reluctance is Necker Island itself, with the British Virgin Islands retreat portrayed as nothing more than a tax haven by some U.K. politicians and newspapers.
Branson confronts the claim in his letter, saying he bought it age 29 because of his “love” of the island and not for tax reasons. Necker, which was originally uninhabited, isn’t just a luxury home, he contends, but also is a business that employs 175 people.
A variety of assets have been collateralized to raise funds during the pandemic, including art, diamonds and London homes, though mortgaging a private island would be particularly unusual.
‘He’s Different’
“To use an island to go to a third party to raise money, I haven’t seen that,” said Farhad Vladi, who rents and sells private islands and estimates Necker was worth more than $100 million before a hurricane strike in 2017. “But, of course, he’s different.”
Branson, who turns 70 in July, has been a resident there since 2006, receiving guests including Princess Diana and Barack Obama. “He’s very emotionally attached to the island,” Vladi said. “It’s part of his family.”
There’s little sign, though, that the announcement regarding Necker and an appeal from Branson to help save thousands of jobs has changed many minds.
“Branson has not paid tax in this country for 14 years,” British lawmaker Diane Abbott tweeted in response to his letter. “On no account should he get a taxpayer bailout, loan or otherwise.”
The U.K. has yet to decide on Virgin Atlantic’s weeks-old application for hundreds of millions of pounds in support.
Virgin Australia
The government has asked the airline to provide details of efforts to seek private-sector cash and hired Morgan Stanley to assess its viability and economic contribution, according to people familiar with the matter. Virgin has engaged investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. to show that it’s exploring all funding options.
Virgin Australia’s position is more acute. Administrators at Deloitte have taken control of the Brisbane-based carrier, aiming to restructure the business and find new owners within months. Virgin Group has a 10% stake in the carrier.
Branson has committed to injecting $250 million to support his companies, with a large share going to Virgin Atlantic. Securing much more cash, though, may be challenging.
His net worth, estimated at more than $5 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has fallen by $2 billion since mid-February. Moreover, the web of investments that comprise Virgin Group makes it difficult to get access to that wealth at a time many of his businesses have seen demand collapse.
“You’ve got things tied up with paper net worth that’s not liquid and some assets have value of X, but they have debt against it,” said Claire Madden, managing partner of Connection Capital, a London-based private equity firm.Play Video
Space Venture
Virgin Group, based like its founder in the British Virgin Islands, doesn’t report consolidated results. Branson last month also moved his $1.8 billion stake in space venture Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. — his most valuable listed business — to the archipelago as part of an internal reorganization.
A spokeswoman for Virgin Group didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Branson said in his letter that he doesn’t have much cash on hand, citing a record of extracting little “significant” profit from Virgin and instead constantly plowing proceeds into new businesses. That’s meant funding a run of comparative duds such as Virgin Cola, as well as successes such as the space arm.
“Oftentimes first-generation wealth holders are consumed with setting-up and growing their businesses, thus they keep reinvesting their wealth back into them,” said Rebecca Gooch, director of research at Campden Wealth. “While this can be the best thing for the businesses, it can also lead to personal liquidity challenges when facing an unprecedented crisis like the coronavirus.”
Branson is hardly the only billionaire needing to shore up businesses as the virus spreads.
Margin Calls
Wealthy investors have had to meet margin calls on their pledged shares as markets plunged. India’s Gautam Adani and his family put up an additional $1.4 billion of stock as collateral on existing debt this month, and wealth managers like UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG have asked clients to post additional guarantees.
Some of the Englishman’s bets have sharpened the cash crunch. In particular, a rebound in Virgin Atlantic’s fortunes last year prompted him to scrap the sale of a 30% stake to Air France-KLM in favor of retaining control.
Branson, who’d said the deal was vital to allow Virgin Atlantic to reach its full potential, should perhaps have heeded his own warnings about the precarious nature of the airline business.
“If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline,” he once said, only half jokingly.
More must-read international coverage from Fortune:
—Controversy around privacy splits Europe’s push to build contact-tracing apps
—Crude math: Why $10 oil could be worth less than nothing
—Why China will recover faster from the coronavirus pandemic than the U.S.
—Coronavirus lockdown diets look the same the world over
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: The global crisis in recycling
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-21--Why flying taxi makers are hitting turbulence

Imagine, in a few years, climbing into a small four-seat air taxi to get to the airport. The craft resembles an airplane, but takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter. Its electric motors make for an eerily quiet ride. And as for the cockpit, well, there isn’t one because there’s no pilot.
Work has already begun on this Jetsons-like future. At least 10 large companies including Google, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Toyota, and Hyundai, as well as a flock of startups, are all racing to build prototypes that would carry either passengers or cargo.
But achieving liftoff has proved difficult, casting a pall over the hype that surrounded the experimental aircraft a few years ago. At least three of the companies trying to produce these mini-aircraft have struggled with technical problems, crashes, and fires.
Even if all goes well, it will be years before autonomous air taxis are ready for public use. And before then, city and federal governments must create regulations for this nascent market and approve flights in urban areas.
In an example of the recent problems, Munich-based Lilium suffered a setback in March when its prototype aircraft caught fire inside the hangar, destroying the vehicle. This occurred just before the COVID-19 pandemic forced most of its 400 employees to work from home.
“For a startup, it’s hard,” says Oliver Walker-Jones, a Lilium spokesman. “You put so much love and dedication and emotion into the prototype. We’ll need to understand the cause of the fire before we start flying again.”
Still, the startup recently received a second round of funding, bringing the total amount it has raised to $340 million. The money is supposed to fund testing of its second aircraft, pay for manufacturing facilities in Germany, and, if all goes as planned, underwrite production by 2025. “It’s not the end of the journey,” says Walker-Jones.
Meanwhile, during the summer, Boeing’s unmanned Aurora prototype project experienced a major setback when the plane crashed. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that vibrations from the passenger aircraft had caused the motors to shut down.
Additionally, startup Kitty Hawk last year ran into snags as well. Flyer, its one-person vehicle, designed to be so simple anyone could fly it after just an hour of training, suffered fires that involved batteries, electric motors, and wiring.
The Mountain View, Calif., startup is funded by Google cofounder Larry Page and run by the A.I. whizzes that started the self-driving car unit of Google’s parent company. “Those fires happened a long time ago and we have not had any since,” says Kitty Hawk spokeswoman Shernaz Daver.
Kitty Hawk had been working on other aircraft, called Cora, a two-seat short-haul pilotless taxi. In December, Kitty Hawk spun Cora out into a separate company called Wisk Aero, which will work with investor Boeing to commercialize the pilotless aircraft.
The Cora, which has wings with tiny propellers, has taken more than 1,200 successful unmanned test flights without the technical glitches that the Flyer experienced. Wisk is working with New Zealand’s government to get the craft certified and is laying the groundwork to fly paying customers. “All I can say is, it’s in the near horizon,” says Wisk CEO Gary Gysin, without providing any dates when he expects those flights to start.
Gysin argues that most crashes happen because of humans, and he believes that an autonomous taxi would make for safer travel. “Everybody recognizes that this is the future,” he says.
For instance, companies are pouring money into solving the problem of the “death zone,” or the airspace below 120 feet that is particularly dangerous for planes. Manufacturers are trying to create safety systems and parachutes as a last resort, but it’s unclear that it would be enough, considering the low altitude involved.
Wisk is preparing for any trouble by equipping Cora with three redundant flight computers, a parachute, and 12 independent vertical lift rotors that each have only one moving part—a fan. There would be enough redundancy that one rotor failure wouldn’t cause a crash. During a test, the company intentionally turned off a fan that’s needed to lift the aircraft, and the vehicle was still able to land safely, says Becky Tanner, Wisk’s marketing chief.
Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Institute, says: “Getting off the ground and making sure safety is assured will be the biggest challenge ahead. But how do you prove that you’re safe through operation and design? And then how do you scale it in airspace and manufacturing?”
At the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Kopardekar’s team is working to sort those questions out with the Federal Aviation Administration. The new cross-agency Advanced Air Mobility team at NASA is trying to create regulations for safety and air traffic control that would enable hundreds of thousands of delivery drones and air taxis to one day buzz 400 feet in the air amid skyscrapers.
The team is considering how to implement air traffic lights and “air lanes” for both manned and unmanned aircraft, and determining which vehicles get priority and when. It’s also looking at how to certify pilots and assess safety.
Many questions remain unanswered: Where will landing pads be built? Who fixes the planes, and who sells them? Can individuals fly them?
In March, NASA created the Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge, with 17 companies to conduct test flights across the nation. The goal is to create airspace simulations that can determine how traffic should flow, and to gather technical information for the new aircraft. “This will be a continuing priority for NASA,” says Kopardekar.
Meanwhile, big companies are racing to get a piece of the market. Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Boeing, and Toyota are working on prototypes or partnering with startups. Google and Amazon are developing smaller, autonomous drone prototypes that will carry cargo instead of people and could reduce delivery costs and ease car congestion. Uber, too, is laying the foundation for an air-taxi system and has even signed a deal with Bell Aerospace to test a 6,500-pound aircraft in the Dallas area that could start carrying six paying passengers by 2023.
In terms of startups, Alaka’i Technologies, of Hopkinton, Mass., last year began testing Skai, a hydrogen-based, four-passenger air-taxi prototype; German startup Volocopter launched the 2x, a two-seat multi-rotor electric helicopter, on its first public flight, in Singapore; and in December, Chinese startup EHang raised $46 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq.
Already this year, Joby, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., nabbed $590 million from investors including Toyota, Intel Capital, and JetBlue’s venture capital arm to continue work on its four-passenger aircraft that it touts as “100 times quieter than a conventional aircraft.”
The potential payoff for air-taxi owners could be big. For instance, a 20-mile Uber ride in a car to the suburbs could take 48 minutes and cost $2 per mile, for a total bill of $40, according to a 2018 report by Morgan Stanley. A driver could earn $400 for a busy day of 10 such trips, or $208,000 annually before expenses.
If a large drone or autonomous aircraft makes that 20-mile trip at 100 mph and $2.50 per mile, passengers could fly home for $50. Faster speeds mean more trips: 40 of them in eight hours, or $2,000 daily per aircraft. That could yield $1.5 million annually—per aircraft.
Because air taxis and drones could replace chunks of existing short- and long-haul air and car travel, Morgan Stanley projects urban air transport could become a $1 trillion market by 2040. “The upside,” says Adam Jonas, a Morgan Stanley analyst who follows the fledgling sector, “is huge.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to make more clear that Wisk owns the Cora air taxi.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How the coronavirus stimulus package would change gig worker benefits
—Zoom meetings keep getting hacked. How to prevent “Zoom bombing”
—Why China’s tech-based fight against the coronavirus may be unpalatable in the U.S.
—Hospitals are running low on the most critical supply of all: oxygen
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro vs. the Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-22--What is Jio Platforms, Facebook’s new $6 billion bet in India?

Why scientists are touting coronavirus ‘ herd immunity ’ for India when it didn ’ t work for the U.K @

On Tuesday, Facebook announced a $5.7 billion investment in Jio Platforms, taking a 9.9% stake in India’s largest mobile telecom provider. The deal will provide Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerburg direct access to Jio’s 370 million subscribers and a strong foothold into a booming mobile market.
Facebook, the tech giant long known for a philosophy of “move fast and break things,” may have found a kindred spirit in its new partner, a company that has upended India’s tech sector and is poised to disrupt the country’s booming e-commerce scene.
From sibling feud to tech giant
In 2010, a little-known Indian Internet service provider called Infotel Broadband Services Limited (IBSL), which ranked No. 150 among India’s ISPs, staged a coup in an India broadband spectrum auction, spending $2.7 billion to win access to bands in every one of the country’s 22 provinces.
Shortly after the auction, Reliance Industries, an Indian conglomerate under the direction of Mukesh Ambani, took a 95% stake in IBSL. The timing of the deal prompted wide speculation that Ambani had prearranged the purchases with IBSL. Competitors in India accused IBSL of breaking auction rules by not acknowledging a previous relationship with Reliance, but a regulatory body eventually cleared IBSL of any wrongdoing.
The IBSL deal was Ambani’s first foray into telecoms since a spat with his brother, Anil Ambani, forced a split in the family business. The two had fought for years for control of their family’s textile empire turned international conglomerate following the 2002 death of their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, who founded the company. The siblings went their separate ways in 2005 when their mother brokered a deal that saw Anil take control of Reliance’s telecom portfolio and Mukesh hold on to its oil assets. But five years on, Mukesh encroached on Anil’s territory, with the purchase of IBSL coming just weeks after Anil agreed to drop a noncompete clause in the telecom sector.
In 2013, Mukesh rebranded ISBL as Jio Platforms, a name similar to another subsidiary of Reliance Industries called Reliance Jio. Over the next few years, Jio would upend the country’s mobile sector and run Mukesh’s own brother out of the telecom business.
In 2016, Mukesh invested $33 billion to construct a nationwide 4G broadband service network and offered cheap data rates and free domestic calling to boost subscribers. The move lured hundreds of millions of Indians to Jio and chased away other telecom firms, like Anil’s Reliance Communications. Along the way, Mukesh assumed the mantle of India’s richest man; his company became India’s top-ranked Fortune 500 company in 2019, with revenue over $82 billion in 2019.
WhatsApp and e-commerce
Jio Platforms has since expanded into areas like digital currencies and education; it has plans to open Jio University in 2021 to educate India’s next generation in areas like artificial intelligence. The company is also a large player in India’s cell phone market, where the company’s simple Jio “feature” phones—offering an Internet connection but few other frills—commanded 21% of India’s total handset market in 2018, a year after introduction.
The major push behind Jio’s new partnership with Facebook, however, seems to be the company’s planned launch of a nationwide JioMart e-commerce platform.
Currently, Amazon and the Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart control over 60% of India’s e-commerce market, according to market intelligence firm S&P Global. Yet these firms have been hit by recent regulations that favor domestic players like JioMart over foreign competitors.
In December, Jio Platforms conducted a soft launch of JioMart in three neighborhoods near Mumbai, offering more than 50,000 grocery products. JioMart had plans to aggressively expand in the early months of 2020, which have likely been put on hold because of the country’s lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.
India is the largest market for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp, with over 400 million users as of July 2019, and the companies hope to use the platforms as a tool to connect small businesses with online retail.
“Jio’s digital new commerce platform and WhatsApp will empower nearly [30,000,000] small Indian Kirana shops to digitally transact with every customer in their neighborhood,” said Ambani, in a video statement on Wednesday.
Facebook also has over 300 million Indian users on its flagship social network, and its new partnership with India’s largest telecom provider will offer new insight into an Internet market that’s expected to grow by over 200 million users in the next four years. In December 2019, Facebook managing director in India, Ajit Mohan, said that revenue per Facebook user in India was low compared to other markets, but the company aimed to invest more in the country in coming years. “It is our privilege to participate in the transformation of India, unlike we can do in China,” Mohan said. (Facebook in banned in mainland China.)
Online grocers have become a lifeblood to millions of Indians since the country went under lockdown in late March. Given its limited rollout, JioMart hasn’t benefited as much as other players. Yet once the crisis eases, Jio Platforms and Facebook may be poised to take advantage of a more savvy e-commerce market.
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fortune--2020-04-22--New coronavirus deaths in California show U.S. had COVID-19 victims weeks earlier than thought

Health officials say two people died with the coronavirus in California weeks before the first reported death from the disease.
Santa Clara County officials said Tuesday the people died at home Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, with the first death in the nation from the virus reported on Feb. 29 in Kirkland, Washington. The Medical Examiner-Coroner received confirmation Tuesday that tissue samples sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested positive for the virus, officials said.
The announcement came after California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised a “deep dive” update Wednesday of the state’s ability to test for the coronavirus and to track and isolate people who have it, one of the six indicators he says is key to lifting a “stay-at-home” order that has slowed the spread of the disease while forcing millions of people to file for unemployment benefits.
“This will go to the obvious questions and queries that all of us are asking: When? … When do you see a little bit of a release in the valve so that we can let out a little of this pressure,” Newsom said Tuesday, teasing what he says will be the first of regular weekly updates on the state’s progress toward reopening.
Newsom says the state is testing an average of 14,500 people per day, up from just 2,000 tests per day at the beginning of April. Still, in a state of nearly 40 million people, that’s not enough for public health officials to know for sure the reach of the highly contagious virus that is still causing outbreaks across the state in nursing homes and homeless shelters.
Newsom said he wants the state to test at least 25,000 people per day by the end of April.
Over the weekend, the California Department of Public Health issued new testing guidance that, for the first time, recommends testing for people in high-risk settings even if they do not have symptoms. The new advice is aimed at hospitals, jails and homeless shelters — three places where physical distancing is difficult.
California has more than 35,600 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
California has been under a mandatory, statewide stay-at-home order for more than a month. Last week, Newsom said he won’t consider loosening that order until hospitalizations, particularly those in intensive care units, flatten and start to decline for at least two weeks. Tuesday, Newsom announced intensive care hospitalizations rose 3.8%.
Other indicators Newsom says he is monitoring include whether the state has adequate protective gear for health care workers, better treatment for the disease and expanded testing.
Some local governments are already loosening their stay-at-home orders. Officials in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, have allowed public and private golf courses to reopen while limiting play to foursomes, requiring physical distancing and face coverings and banning caddies, gatherings and dining in clubhouses.
At Van Buren Golf Center in Riverside, supervisor Angel Zabala said business was steady when the nine-hole course reopened Tuesday.
“A lot of people are happy,” Zabala said. “People have expressed relief as far as we’re finally open.”
Newsom said his administration is getting calls from local governments around the state with questions about how they might gradually loosen their stay-at-home orders.
“Everybody has a different timeline. So that’s the challenge,” Newsom said.
Newsom’s news conference, scheduled for noon Wednesday, will be watched closely by business groups who are clamoring to reopen so they can start paying their workers again.
“We just hope (Wednesday) we might hear of some additional steps from the governor that small businesses will be able to take towards opening their doors and turning their lights on,” said John Kabateck, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.
Restaurants were some of the first businesses ordered to close because of the virus outbreak, and they have suffered some of the heaviest job losses. A survey of restaurant operators conducted by the National Restaurant Association found more than 1 million workers had either lost their jobs or been furloughed since March — at least 70% of all restaurant employees that were working in February.
But like most industries, restaurant operators are torn between the desire to get back to work and not wanting to rush back too soon and risk setting off another deadly outbreak of the disease, said Jot Condie, CEO of the California Restaurant Association.
“We’re hopeful that we get this right the first time,” he said.
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fortune--2020-04-22--Behind the B Corp movement and its fight against corporate ‘greenwashing’

When Andy Smith calls his nature photography business green, it’s not a hard sell. But when a global food corporation like Danone does, it requires a little more substantiation. Consumer marketing is awash with the hue, and its ubiquity has made the color lose both luster and credibility—especially when applied to a large multinational. To prove their environmental mettle, both companies are adding B’s to their recyclable labels.
The black or white encircled B logo denotes B Corporation certification, a designation awarded by the global nonprofit B Lab to companies that maintain high environmental, social, and legal standards. And it isn’t doled out freely. To be certified, companies must meet specific legal requirements and complete the B Lab assessment, a fine-tooth evaluation of operations that requires a score of at least 80 out of a total 200 points to pass (the median score for ordinary businesses is 50.9). To maintain B Corp distinction, companies pay yearly fees ranging from $1,000 to upwards of $50,000 per year, depending on annual revenue, and must recertify every three years.
“The original idea was to create a certification so there would be a clear way for people to understand what a good business is,” explains Andrew Kassoy, who cofounded B Lab in 2007 alongside Jay Coen Gilbert and Bart Houlahan. At the time, he says, “There was no way to distinguish a good company from good marketing.” Since then, brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Seventh Generation have joined the ranks. Of the more than 22,000 that have applied, only 3,285 have qualified, including recently Guardian Media Group and The Body Shop. South Mountain Co., an employee-owned renewable design and building firm on Martha’s Vineyard, has the highest rating with 183.
After Athleta earned B Corp certification in 2018, parent Gap Inc. announced plans to pursue certification of its entire brand portfolio. Courtesy of B Lab
Since acquiring the B Corp–certified organic baby food brand Happy Family in 2013, Danone has taken a subsidiary-by-subsidiary approach to certification, with the goal of attaining global status by 2030. A total of 20 subsidiaries have been certified so far, covering more than a third of the food and beverage giant’s sales, the lion’s share of which come from Danone North America, which became the world’s largest B Corp in April 2018. Earlier this year, Danone, which ranks number 432 on the Fortune Global 500, announced plans to halve virgin plastic used by its water brands and switch exclusively to recycled PET in Europe by 2025.
As a vocal advocate for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reform, Danone’s chief executive officer, Emmanuel Faber, sees the certification as a way to reframe conversations with consumers. “I think B Corp can become the standard corporate language for ESG and Sustainable Development Goal impact,” he says. He’s thrown his weight as an individual donor behind the SDG Action Manager, a free tool launched by B Lab and the United Nations Global Compact to help businesses take environmental action. With the authority B Corp certification brings to the dialogue, he thinks greenwashing will get a lot harder.
Danone North America represents 20% of the company’s global business. B Lab holds wholly owned subsidiaries to an even higher standard by publishing their full assessments online and increasing the odds of a random site review by 20%. Courtesy of Danone North America
In addition to Happy Family, B Corp branding appears on Horizon Organic milk, Silk yogurt and drinks, and Two Good Greek yogurt in the U.S., as well as Danone products in Argentina, France, Indonesia, and Spain. Faber concedes that some customers may be unfamiliar with the B Corp logo, but that doesn’t worry him. “We’re putting the B Corp logo on our packaging because our brands want to have that conversation with their consumers,” he says. In the U.K., Danone goes a step further by using the inside of packaging to explain the B Corp philosophy.
Athleta, a women’s activewear subsidiary of Gap Inc., takes a similar tack. When it earned B Corp bragging rights in 2018, it plastered branding on storefronts and placards, proclaiming: “Athleta is a B Corp. That means we’ve proven that we put people and planet up there with profit.” Chief marketing officer Sheila Shekar Pollak says the logo brings to clothing stores what non-GMO and organic labeling bring to the grocery store. “The signage is a way for our customer to easily see what we stand for,” she says.
The same holds true for sole proprietors like Andy Smith Photography, one of B Corp’s first inductees. While he may not need as much validation, the northwest New Jersey–area photographer uses the branding as a mark of distinction. At fine-arts craft shows, he posts a red signboard explaining how his B Corp valuation—renewed three times and counting—sets his work apart. “I want it out there,” he says.
Athleta has put B Corp’s logo on clothing tags, in-store placards, and even sidewalk signs. “We pursued the rigorous process of B Corp certification as one way to validate the work we’ve done to bring our mission to life,” says Athleta’s chief marketing officer, Sheila Shekar Pollak. Courtesy of Athleta
For Rodrigo Trespalacios, who plans to apply to have his startup Proveit certified, marketing is only part of the equation. “People want to be sustainable and buy products from companies that treat their employees well,” he says. “But there’s a big gap between wanting to do it and actually being able to.” Currently in beta, Proveit aims to fill the gap with a browser extension for online shoppers that rates household products on sustainability by aggregating data from B Lab, Leaping Bunny, and other certification organizations.
Thrive Market, a Los Angeles membership-based e-tailer lets shoppers filter products by more than 70 values, from dietary to social. The online market lists more than 800 products from over 60 B Corp–certified companies, including GoodPop, a brand of all-natural frozen treats. Its founder, Daniel Goetz, says being a B Corp has been a good way to find like-minded brands and customers. One way they’ve come together is through social media promotions. “We try to find peer brands that have similar products or similar consumers in separate product categories,” he says. “The community is sort of the cherry on top.”
The B Corp logo underscores GoodPop’s company mission. “In one symbol it gives consumers a quick understanding of what a company is about,” says GoodPop founder Daniel Goetz. Courtesy of GoodPop
But it’s not just consumers who are drawn in by B Corp values. Quo Vadis, a community-driven real estate developer in Montreal, has been able to recruit top talent. “Since being certified, I’ve had people leave very large positions at other companies to come and work for us because of what we stand for,” says owner and president Natalie Voland. “We’ve been able to say, ‘We put our money where our mouth is,’” she adds.
More than 650 companies earned B Corp certification last year, the largest tally on record. Kassoy is encouraged by the momentum, but also by how B Corp firms have managed to flip the green-marketing script. “In many ways, what’s even more gratifying and exciting to us is that B Corp companies are acting collectively to change the narrative about the purpose of business,” he says.
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fortune--2020-04-22--Why scientists are touting coronavirus ‘herd immunity’ for India when it didn’t work for the U.K.

New coronavirus deaths in California show U.S. had COVID-19 victims weeks earlier than thought

Controversial given the high risk of deaths, a coronavirus strategy discarded by the U.K. is being touted as the solution for poor but young countries like India.
Herd immunity, which allows a majority of the population to gain resistance to the virus by becoming infected and then recovering, could result in less economic devastation and human suffering than restrictive lockdowns designed to stop its spread, according to a growing group of experts.
“No country can afford a prolonged period of lockdowns, and least of all a country like India,” said Jayaprakash Muliyil, a prominent Indian epidemiologist. “You may be able to reach a point of herd immunity without infection really catching up with the elderly. And when the herd immunity reaches a sufficient number the outbreak will stop, and the elderly are also safe.”
A team of researchers at Princeton University and the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, a public health advocacy group based in New Delhi and Washington, has identified India as a place where this strategy could be successful because its disproportionately young population would face less risk of hospitalization and death.
They said allowing the virus to be unleashed in a controlled way for the next seven months would give 60% of the country’s people immunity by November, and thus halt the disease.
Mortality could be limited as the virus spreads compared to European nations like Italy given that 93.5% of the Indian population is younger than 65, they said, though no death toll projections were released.
The radical proposal underscores the challenges that poorer developing countries — including nations like Indonesia and some in sub-Saharan Africa — face in curbing the epidemic using the lockdown measures that have been adopted by advanced economies.
The impossibility of social distancing in crowded living conditions like in many cities and villages in India, the lack of testing kits to detect infections and the human suffering that occurs in lockdowns suggests a different path may be needed in these places.
To do this, the Princeton and CDDEP team recommends lifting India’s strict lockdown — which has been extended to May 3 — and letting most of the population younger than 60 return to normal life, though social distancing still would be encouraged, masks would be required and large gatherings would be banned. The reopening would be accompanied by an effort to test as many people as possible and isolate confirmed and suspected cases.
People over 60 would essentially have to remain under lockdown until herd immunity is achieved, and be prioritized for testing and treatment if they fell sick.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given no indication it plans to adopt such a strategy.
Yet India’s government has laid out criteria that effectively rations coronavirus tests, limiting them to the very sick or most at risk. Critics who suspect the disease has dispersed much more widely than the official numbers suggest say the government’s restrictive criteria amounts to allowing the disease to spread.
“In some sense, you are saying, we will let them get infected and recover, and take care only of those who are sick,” said T. Sundararaman, the New Delhi-based global coordinator of the People’s Health Movement, a public health group. “That’s the policy, that’s what it amounts to.”
The government has maintained its testing criteria gives an accurate tally of India’s number of cases, and says the disease is not spreading untracked in the community. Nevertheless, as India has ramped up testing, it is finding more cases each day, bringing the nationwide tally to 20,080, with 645 deaths, as of April 21.
But while questions remain as to the extent and severity of India’s outbreak, the costs of the lockdown are clear. Local governments have had to set up camps to house 1.25 million migrants who left cities when they lost work, while food camps feed 7.5 million daily wage earners also rendered destitute by the lockdown. There are already signs these stopgap measures are starting to fray.
“We’re dealing with a trade-off against starvation, hunger, all this other stuff,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, the director of the CDDEP and a Princeton researcher. By allowing the coronavirus to spread in a controlled way, “undoubtedly there will be deaths, but it will be much smaller this way, and it opens us up for business by November,” he said.
But the strategy has already proved controversial internationally. The U.K. adopted and then abandoned it early in the pandemic after projections showed its health care system would be overwhelmed by the resulting hospitalizations. That brief dalliance is still being blamed for the British government’s slow response in testing for the virus.
Risky Strategy
Even in a country like India with a young population, the concept has inherent risks. Allowing people to become infected will inevitably bring many more patients to hospitals. The researchers say India will have to urgently expand critical care and isolation-bed capacity to ensure that multiple waves of patients don’t become casualties before herd immunity is reached.
Another risk is that India’s worst-in the-world air pollution and high rates of hypertension and diabetes have compromised young people’s health, meaning that mortality from the virus could be higher than expected. People may let their guards down and fail to follow social distancing guidelines.
“I would worry that it would relax concerns of younger individuals, who still remain at substantial risk themselves,” Jason Andrews, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, said in an email. “The messaging in particular may lead younger people to perceive themselves as at lower risk than they are, and to fail to understand their potential role in transmission.”
And given the novel coronavirus only made its debut in humans some time late last year, there’s still a lot that’s unknown. Immunity from the virus may be a more complex process than expected. One group of researchers estimated as much as 82% of the population would have to be infected before herd immunity is reached.
“My view is there are a number of questions about whether it can work,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The main questions being how much immunity do we need in the population, and how much immunity does each person get as a result of infection.”
Then there’s also the question of whether it’s possible to wall off the higher-risk portion of the population in densely packed India, where multiple generations commonly live under one roof.
Ultimately, the researchers lobbying for the strategy argue that cultivating herd immunity may be the best of various bad options.
“I think eventually all countries will follow this Indian model,” Laxminarayan said. “Because otherwise we are going to be in lockdown on and off all the way through until June of next year.”
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Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.