fortune--2020-02-20--Fecal transmission may be responsible for coronavirus’s rapid spread

The novel coronavirus is shed in the feces of infected people, which may help explain why it’s spread so fast, according to Chinese researchers.
The finding of live virus particles in stool specimens indicates a fecal-oral route for coronavirus, which may be why it’s caused outbreaks on cruise ships with an intensity often seen with gastro-causing norovirus, which also spreads along that pathway. More than 600 Covid-19 infections were confirmed among passengers and crew aboard the Diamond Princess, the ship quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan.
“This virus has many routes of transmission, which can partially explain” its rapid spread, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Saturday.
The agency recommends strengthening sanitation and hygiene measures to prevent fecal-oral transmission in epidemic area. These include drinking boiled water, avoiding eating raw food, implementing separate meal systems, frequent hand-washing, disinfecting toilets, and preventing water and food contamination from patients’ stool.
“The virus can also be transmitted through the potential fecal-oral route,” the Chinese CDC said. “This means that stool samples may contaminate hands, food, water” and cause infection when the microbes enter the mouth or eyes, or are inhaled, they said.
Rectal swabs can detect the pneumonia-causing virus in patients even when conventional oral tests are negative, doctors at the Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital in central China said in a study.
The novel SARS-like coronavirus was found in oral and anal swabs, and blood — indicating that infected patients may shed the pathogen through respiratory, fecal-oral or body fluid routes, the authors said.
They showed that the current strategy for detecting viral RNA in oral swabs used to diagnose Covid-19 cases “is not perfect,” the researchers said. They noted that patients may harbor the virus in the intestine at the early or late stage of disease, and that a blood test for antibodies against the virus should be considered to better understand patterns of infection.
The coronaviruses that cause Covid-19 and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, bind to the same distinctly shaped protein receptors in the body that are expressed in the lungs and intestines, making these organs the primary targets for both viruses, said Fang Li, an associate professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences at the University of Minnesota, last month.
A virus-laden aerosol plume emanating from a SARS patient with diarrhea was implicated in possibly hundreds of cases at Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens housing complex in 2003.
That led the city’s researchers to understand the importance of the virus’s spread through the gastrointestinal tract, and to recognize both the limitation of face masks and importance of cleanliness and hygiene, according to John Nicholls, a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong.
Squat latrines, common in China, lacking covers and hands that aren’t washed thoroughly with soap and water after visiting the bathroom, could be a source of virus transmission, said Nicholls, who was part of the research team that isolated and characterized the SARS virus.
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—Mapping a contagion: How the coronavirus may spread around the world
—Frustrations fly as MWC trade show customers seek refunds following last-minute cancelation
—In China, oil won’t be the only energy sector battered by the coronavirus
—Coronavirus recovery: Why it’s so hard for China’s factories to get back to work
—Coronavirus may be the straw that breaks the back of oil fracking
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fortune--2020-02-20--Why only one-quarter of the world will get true 5G wireless, McKinsey says

HTC CEO Yves Maitre on the company ’ s ‘ new vision , ’ virtual reality , and the rivalry @ @

The wireless industry is spending tens of billions dollars annually to install superfast 5G networks, but the first wave of the technology isn’t likely to reach most people in the next decade, according to a new report from consulting firm McKinsey.
At a total cost of $700 billion to $900 billion, the initial installations of 5G will cover 25% of the world’s population by 2030, or about 2 billion people, the report predicts. The coverage will be largely in wealthy and developed areas in the U.S., China, and Europe.
Those networks will bring download speeds 10-times faster than current 4G network and allow 100-times more devices to connect to each cell site, enabling new applications that will improve healthcare, manufacturing, and other industries. But because they require such expensive equipment, “these networks are likely to be limited to select geographies for the foreseeable future,” the report notes.
In the U.S., AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have just begun rolling out 5G networks in some cities. The current coverage is uneven and will take several years to match the coverage of existing 4G networks. A recent Fortune test found download speeds for 5G varied widely, even in areas with the fastest 5G technologies installed. South Korea and China have many more cities connected to 5G.
A somewhat slower and cheaper type of 5G, using the same airwave bands as current 4G networks, will be able to reach 80% of the world’s population by 2030 at a cost of $400 billion to $500 billion, McKinsey forecasts. Although only slightly faster than current 4G networks, the slower 5G implementation will still foster many new applications thanks to greater capacity for connected devices and shorter delays in sending data back and forth.
“The economics work for providers to cover some 80 percent of the world’s population (approximately 7 billion people) with low- to mid-band 5G networks by 2030, although the level of quality will vary,” the report says.
That will reduce the portion of the population without adequate connectivity to 20% from 40% today, says Sree Ramaswamy, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute. “The economic and social benefits would be profound, from improved access to mobile banking and credit to new educational opportunities,” Ramaswamy says.
That could add $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion to the global gross domestic product, which totaled $85 trillion in 2018.
Separately, the economic impact of 5G will also be significant in many industries, the report states. In just four areas—mobility, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail—the world’s gross domestic product could increase another $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030. Such gains will come from everything from reducing car accidents to remote diagnosis of medical patients to more efficient supply chain management. Those four sectors account for 30% of global GDP.
However, another new technology offering speedy connectivity could catch on and reach far more people, the report notes. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Softbank Group’s OneWeb are launching thousands of small satellites into low Earth orbit, or LEO, in an effort to blanket the globe with cheap Internet coverage. Amazon also plans to join the Internet space race via its Project Kuiper.
“If LEO satellites are successfully deployed, they have the potential to change the game and almost erase the gap,” the report states. “Yet they remain a wild card—and other barriers such as readiness and the affordability of devices and data plans would need to be addressed in addition to coverage.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Apple defied the odds to post the biggest quarterly profit ever
—Oracle and Google are about to face off in tech’s trial of the century
—Can San Francisco be saved?
—Did the ‘techlash’ kill Alphabet’s city of the future?
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-20--Fact checking claims from the Democratic debate in Las Vegas

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The latest Democratic presidential debate was a raucous one, ripe for exaggerations and distortions as Mike Bloomberg made his debut on the debate stage and rivals went after him and each other. President Donald Trump weighed in on the feisty performance at a rally where he mischaracterized what some Democrats want to do with health care.
A look at how some of their claims Wednesday night stack up with the facts:
MIKE BLOOMBERG, on the stop-and-frisk policing policy when he was New York mayor: “What happened, however, was it got out of control and when we discovered — I discovered — that we were doing many, many, too many stop and frisks, we cut 95% of them out.”
THE FACTS: That’s a distortion of how stop and frisk declined. That happened because of a court order, not because Bloomberg learned that it was being overused.
In Bloomberg’s first 10 years in office, the number of stop-and-frisk actions increased nearly 600% from when he took office in 2002, reaching a peak of nearly 686,000 stops in 2011. That declined to about 192,000 documented stops in 2013, his final year as mayor.
Bloomberg achieved his claim of a 95% cut by cherry-picking the quarterly high point of 203,500 stops in the first quarter of 2012 and comparing that with the 12,485 stops in the last quarter of 2013.
The former mayor defended the practice even after leaving office at the end of 2013 and only apologized for it a few weeks before declaring his candidacy for presidency.
___
TRUMP, on Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan: “Think of this: 180 million Americans are going to lose health care coverage under this plan. But if you don’t mind, I’m not going to criticize it tonight. Let them keep going and I’ll start talking about it about two weeks out from the election.” — Arizona rally.
THE FACTS: That’s a thorough misrepresentation of the Sanders plan as well as similar plans by Democrats in Congress. People wouldn’t “lose” coverage. Under Sanders, they would be covered by a new and universal government plan that replaces private and job-based insurance. Democrats who stop short of proposing to replace private and job-based insurance would offer an option for people to take a Medicare-like plan, also toward the goal of ensuring universal coverage.
___
BLOOMBERG, citing his philanthropy’s work with the Sierra Club: “Already we’ve closed 304 out of the 530 coal fire plants in the United States, and we’ve closed 80 out of the 200 or 300 that are in Europe.”
THE FACTS: He’s wrongly taking credit for driving the U.S. coal industry to its knees.
The U.S. coal industry’s plunge is largely due to market forces, above all drops in prices of natural gas and renewable energy that have made costlier coal-fired power plants much less competitive for electric utilities. Bloomberg has indeed contributed huge sums to efforts to close coal plants and fight climate change, but against the backdrop of an industry besieged on other fronts.
U.S. coal production peaked in 2008, but since then has fallen steadily. That’s due largely to a boom in oil and gas production from U.S. shale, begun under the Obama administration, that made natural gas far more abundant and cheaper, and falling prices for wind and solar energy, partly because of improving technology in the renewable sector.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reaffirmed in a report in December the extent to which the market has turned away from coal.
___
ELIZABETH WARREN: Buttigieg’s health care plan is “a thin version of a plan.”
PETE BUTTIGIEG: His own proposal “is the plan that solves the problem.”
THE FACTS: Warren, a Massachusetts senator, is quick to dismiss a plan that would cover virtually all U.S. citizens and legal residents.
An analysis of health care overhaul plans by the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth Fund found that an approach like the one advocated by Buttigieg, a former South Bend, Indiana, mayor, would reduce the number of uninsured people from 32 million to below 7 million, mainly people without legal permission to be in the country.
The proposal from Buttigieg features a new government-sponsored “public option” plan that even people with employer-sponsored coverage could join voluntarily.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What happens to leftover campaign funds when a candidate drops out of the race?
—Putting politics aside to close the skills gap
—America’s heading for a tax on the middle class
—The case for a national primary
—Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-20--Bloomberg and Sanders hit with fierce attacks during Democrats’ Nevada debate

From the opening bell, Democrats savaged New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised pointed questions about Bernie Sanders’ take-no-prisoners politics during a contentious debate Wednesday night that threatened to further muddy the party’s urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who was once a Republican, was forced to defend his record and past comments related to race, gender and his personal wealth in an occasionally rocky debate stage debut. Sanders, meanwhile, tried to beat back pointed questions about his embrace of democratic socialism and his health following a heart attack last year.
The ninth debate of this cycle featured the most aggressive sustained period of infighting in the Democrats’ yearlong search for a presidential nominee. The tension reflected growing anxiety among candidates and party leaders that the nomination fight could yield a candidate who will struggle to build a winning coalition in November to beat Trump.
The campaign is about to quickly intensify. Nevada votes on Saturday and South Carolina follows on February 29. More than a dozen states host Super Tuesday contests in less than two weeks with about one-third of the delegates needed to win the nomination at stake.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was in a fight for survival and stood out with repeated attacks on Bloomberg. She sought to undermine him with core Democratic voters who are uncomfortable with his vast wealth, his offensive remarks about policing of minorities and demeaning comments about women, including those who worked at his company.
Warren labeled Bloomberg “a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians.”
She wasn’t alone.
Sanders lashed out at Bloomberg’s policing policies as New York City mayor that Sanders said targeted “African-American and Latinos in an outrageous way.”
And former Vice President Joe Biden charged that Bloomberg’s “stop-and-frisk” policy ended up “throwing 5 million black men up against the wall.”
Watching during his Western campaign swing, Trump joined the Bloomberg pile on. “Mini Mike Bloomberg’s debate performance tonight was perhaps the worst in the history of debates, and there have been some really bad ones,” Trump tweeted. “He was stumbling, bumbling and grossly incompetent. If this doesn’t knock him out of the race, nothing will. Not so easy to do what I did!”
After the debate, Warren told reporters: “I have no doubt that Michael Bloomberg is reaching in his pocket right now, and spending another hundred million dollars to try to erase every American’s memory about what happened on the debate stage.”
On a night that threatened to tarnish the shine of his carefully constructed TV-ad image, Bloomberg faltered when attacked on issues related to race and gender. But he was firm and unapologetic about his wealth and how he has used it to affect change important to Democrats. He took particular aim at Sanders and his self-description as a democratic socialist.
“I don’t think there’s any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump,” Bloomberg declared before noting Sanders’ rising wealth. “The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses!”
Sanders defended owning multiple houses, noting he has one in Washington, where he works, and two in Vermont, the state he represents in the Senate.
While Bloomberg was the shiny new object Wednesday, the debate also marked a major test for Sanders, who is emerging as the front-runner in the Democrats’ nomination fight, whether his party’s establishment likes it or not. A growing group of donors, elected officials and political operatives fear that Sanders’ uncompromising progressive politics could be a disaster in the general election against Trump, yet they’ve struggled to coalesce behind a single moderate alternative.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, went after both Bloomberg and Sanders, warning that one threatened to “burn down” the Democratic Party and the other was trying to buy it.
He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage,” with little chance of defeating Trump or helping congressional Democrats in contests with Republicans.
Bloomberg and Sanders were prime targets, but the stakes were no less dire for the other four candidates on stage.
Longtime establishment favorite Biden, a two-term vice president, desperately needed to breathe new life into his flailing campaign, which entered the night at the bottom of a moderate muddle behind Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. And after a bad finish last week in New Hampshire, Warren was fighting to resurrect her stalled White House bid.
A Warren campaign aide said on Twitter that her fiery first hour of debate was her best hour of fundraising “to date.”
The other leading progressive in the race, Sanders came under attack from Biden and Bloomberg for his embrace of democratic socialism.
Sanders, as he has repeatedly over the last year, defended the cost of his signature “Medicare for All” healthcare plan, which would eliminate the private insurance industry in favor of a government-backed healthcare system that would cover all Americans.
“When you asked Bernie how much it cost last time he said…’We’ll find out,’” Biden quipped. “It costs over $35 trillion, let’s get real.”
And ongoing animosity flared between Buttigieg and Klobuchar when the former Indiana mayor slammed the three-term Minnesota senator for failing to answer questions in a recent interview about Mexican policy and forgetting the name of the Mexican president.
Buttigieg noted that she’s on a committee that oversees trade issues in Mexico and she “was not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country.”
She shot back: “Are you trying to say I’m dumb? Are you mocking me here?”
Later in the night she lashed out at Buttigieg again: “I wish everyone else was as perfect as you, Pete.”
The debate closed with a question about the possibility that Democrats remain divided deep into the primary season with a final resolution coming during a contested national convention in July.
Asked if the candidate with the most delegates should be the nominee — even if he or she is short of a delegate majority, almost every candidate suggested that the convention process should “work its way out,” as Biden put it.
Sanders, who helped force changes to the nomination process this year and hopes to take a significant delegate lead in the coming weeks, was the only exception.
“The person who has the most votes should become the nominee,” he said.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What happens to leftover campaign funds when a candidate drops out of the race?
—Putting politics aside to close the skills gap
—America’s heading for a tax on the middle class
—The case for a national primary
—Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-19--Smoking, coronavirus, and the deaths of Chinese men

Three mega-deals to have on your radar today

This is the web version of Brainstorm Health Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top health care news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good afternoon, readers.
What a week it’s been for coronavirus news. My colleague Erika Fry eloquently summed up the latest updates from public health organizations about the death and infection toll from the pathogen (and, given the ever-evolving nature of this story, the numbers have already shifted, with more than 2,000 now reported dead).
I think one of the most interesting developments is the growing evidence that China’s massive smoking rate is, at best, making the outbreak more difficult to contain—and at worst increasing the number of infections and deaths among certain populations.
The demographic at the highest risk is Chinese men, especially middle-aged to older patients. It’s well known that China is one of the world’s largest consumers of tobacco products. But while reporting this story, I learned some eye-popping facts about just how deep the smoking problem extends in the country.
For instance: More than 52% of Chinese males aged 15 and over are regular smokers, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), compared with just 2.7% of females.
So what does this have to do with coronavirus? For one, it might help explain why the mortality rate from the pathogen is so much higher among men (2.8%) than in women (1.7%).
“The question is whether smoking has a direct impact on the coronavirus,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, tells me. “And preliminary evidence suggests that may be the case.”
That’s due to a combination of factors that Hotez and Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, explained to me—including the higher prevalence, in smokers, of a certain biomarker that the current coronavirus strain clings to.
Smoking can also undermine the immune system and increase the risk for underlying respiratory illnesses that are exacerbated by coronavirus. In short, the habit could potentially create a perfect public health storm.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
The price of whole genome sequencing has dropped to $299. When the Human Genome Project accomplished its namesake goal of, well, sequencing an entire human genome back in 2003, the effort cost approximately $2.7 billion. Fast-forward to 2020 and upstart Nebula Genomics, co-founded by the legendary geneticist and Harvard professor George Church, is offering a $299 direct-to-consumer whole genome sequencing product. The company says its service is markedly different from other DTC testing kits on the market given that it sequences the entirety of a genome, rather than just snippets. One issue to look out for? The ethics of marketing such products to consumers who may not know exactly what to do with the information. To that end, Nebula is emphasizing a commitment to data privacy and weekly reports for its customers.
A Malaysian company is using A.I. to determine coronavirus risk. Reuters reports that Malaysian firm MYEG Services is using an A.I.-powered service to screen for Chinese visitors who may be at high risk for coronavirus infection. Using a combination of people's geographic data and certain biometrics such as blood pressure readings, the system can reportedly create risk profiles for those visiting the country. (Reuters)
INDICATIONS
Buffett's Biogen bet. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is betting big on Biogen and its Alzheimer's drug ambitions. The company snatched up nearly 650,000 shares of Biogen (at a $192 million value) at the end of last year. It's the definition of a high-risk, high-reward gamble. Biogen hopes that its experimental aducanumab (once abandoned and then stunningly revived by the company last year) will pass Food and Drug Administration (FDA) muster given the dearth of treatments in the space. Berkshire clearly thinks the biotech has a chance. (FiercePharma)
THE BIG PICTURE
Coronavirus misinformation fueled by government mistrust. My colleague Naomi Elegant dives into another dilemma with containing the coronavirus outbreak: Fundamental misinformation about the virus exacerbated by mistrust in the Chinese government. "[A]s Beijing has bungled its response to the virus—withholding early information about the outbreak, reprimanding a whistleblower who later died of the disease, and revising virus data after-the-fact—public trust in the government as the ultimate arbiter of information is starting to erode," Naomi writes. (Fortune)
REQUIRED READING
The city that sees it all, by Grady McGregor
A legendary investor offers a green-energy manifesto, by Shawn Tully
Why Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For are beating out the competition, by Lance Lambert
Did the techlash kill Alphabet's city of the future? by Robert Hackett
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fortune--2020-02-19--The score was Tesla 0, electrical tape 1 in an automated driving test

Researchers were able to trick a Tesla vehicle into speeding by putting a strip of electrical tape over a speed limit sign, spotlighting the kinds of potential vulnerabilities facing automated driving systems.
Technicians at McAfee placed the piece of tape horizontally across the middle of the “3” on a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit sign. The change caused the vehicle to read the limit as 85 miles per hour, and its cruise control system automatically accelerated, according to research released by McAfee on Wednesday.
McAfee says the issue isn’t a serious risk to motorists. No one was hurt and the researcher behind the wheel was able to safely slow the car.
But the findings, from 18 months of research that ended last year, illustrate a weakness of machine learning systems used in automated driving, according to Steve Povolny, head of advanced threat research at McAfee. Other research has shown how changes in the physical world can confuse such systems.
The tests involved a 2016 Model S and Model X that used camera systems supplied by Mobileye, now a unit of Intel. Mobileye systems are used by several automakers though Tesla stopped using them in 2016.
Tests on Mobileye’s latest camera system didn’t reveal the same vulnerability, and Tesla’s latest vehicles apparently don’t depend on traffic sign recognition, according to McAfee.
Tesla didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the research.
“Manufacturers and vendors are aware of the problem and they’re learning from the problem,” Povolny said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of blind spots in this industry.”
To be sure, the real-world threats of such an occurrence today are limited. For one, self-driving cars are still in the development phase, and most are being tested with safety drivers behind the wheel. Vehicles with advanced driver-assist systems that are available now still require the human to be attentive.
And the McAfee researchers were only able to trick the system by duplicating a certain sequence involving when a driver-assist function was turned on and encountered the altered speed limit sign. Manufacturers are also integrating mapping technology into systems that reflect the proper speed limit.
“It’s quite improbable that we’ll ever see this in the wild or that attackers will try to leverage this until we have truly autonomous vehicles, and by that point we hope that these kinds of flaws are addressed earlier on,” Povolny said.
In a statement, Mobileye said human drivers can also be fooled by such a modification and that the system tested by the researchers was designed to assist a human driver and not to support autonomous driving.
Robust Redundancies
“Autonomous vehicle technology will not rely on sensing alone, but will also be supported by various other technologies and data, such as crowd sourced mapping, to ensure the reliability of the information received from the camera sensor and offer more robust redundancies and safety,” the company said.
The McAfee research follows similar academic work in what’s known as adversarial machine learning, a relatively new field that studies how computer-based learning systems can be manipulated. Researchers in 2017 found that placing four black and white stickers in specific locations on a stop sign could “trick” a computer vision system into seeing a 45 mile per hour speed limit sign, for example.
The issue isn’t specific to Tesla or Mobileye, but is a broader weakness inherent in the advanced systems powering self-driving cars, said Missy Cummings, a Duke University robotics professor and autonomous vehicle expert, and researchers have shown that potentially serious malfunctions can be caused by changing the physical environment without accessing the system itself.
“And that’s why it’s so dangerous, because you don’t have to access the system to hack it, you just have to access the world that we’re in,” she said.
Cummings said McAfee’s findings illustrate why autonomous cars should be subjected to a “vision test” to evaluate whether self-driving systems can safely detect and respond to real-world situations created by other vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users.
Safety advocates have also urged U.S. auto safety regulators and lawmakers to include such an evaluation among other requirements in new automated vehicle legislation being developed in Congress.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Apple defied the odds to post the biggest quarterly profit ever
—Oracle and Google are about to face off in tech’s trial of the century
—Can San Francisco be saved?
—Did the ‘techlash’ kill Alphabet’s city of the future?
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-19--Tonight’s Democratic debate: How to watch, start time, and 4 key issues to watch for during it

Three days before the crucial Nevada caucuses, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg will face his Democratic presidential challengers on the debate stage for the first time in Las Vegas Wednesday night.
Although not on the Nevada ballot, Bloomberg qualified for the latest debate by ranking in four Democratic National Committee-approved polls.
“Mike Bloomberg has had the benefit of flooding the airwaves and inboxes without being truly tested on his policies and records,” says Democratic strategist Alaina Beverly, a former aide in the White House Office of Urban Affairs during the Obama administration. “That’s all about to change.”
The ninth debate begins at 9 p.m. E.T. and will be held at the Paris Theater. Hosted by NBC News, MSNBC, Noticias Telemundo, and the Nevada Independent, the debate will be moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor and Dateline host, Lester Holt; NBC’s Meet the Press moderator, Chuck Todd; NBC Chief White House correspondent and MSNBC anchor, Hallie Jackson; Telemundo correspondent, Vanessa Hauc, and the Nevada Independent‘s Jon Ralston.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Democrats with 32% support in a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week. That number is up 9 percentage points since January. Former Vice President Joe Biden came in at 16%, Bloomberg at 14%, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 12% in the poll.
So, will Sanders and Bloomberg butt heads tonight? Will former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg jump into the fray? Will slumping Warren and Biden go after Sanders? And, can Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) follow up her robust back-to-back debate performances?
Here’s what you should know ahead of tonight’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas.
Who qualified for the debate?
Here are the six candidates who qualified for Wednesday’s Democratic debate:
Joe Biden
Mike Bloomberg
Pete Buttigieg
Amy Klobuchar
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and California billionaire and activist Tom Steyer are both still in the Democratic race, but did not qualify to participate in tonight’s debate.
How to watch tonight’s Democratic debate online—even without cable
The Democratic debate will be broadcast live on NBC News, MSNBC, and Universo (in Spanish). It will also be available via live stream on the web sites of NBC News, MSNBC, Telemundo, and the Nevada Independent.
NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo will also stream the debate via its mobile apps on iOS, Android, as well as their social media sites. And NBC News NOW will live stream the debate on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and other streaming devices.
YouTube, SiriusXM Radio channels 118 and 124, and TuneIn will also broadcast tonight’s debate.
4 key issues to watch for during the debate
All six candidates will have something to prove: Are they electable enough to defeat President Donald Trump? Here’s what to expect:
1. The Bloomberg effect
As Generation Z’ers would say, Bloomberg is about to “get that smoke” from his debate rivals up close on Wednesday. The candidates will undoubtedly go after the former NYC mayor on his political record and might claim he’s bought his way to the top of the polls and onto the debate stage.
Expect Sanders to pull no punches and go directly after Bloomberg being the head of a media empire, over his past remarks about women and minorities, and his past support of the controversial police practice known as “stop-and-frisk,” which was widely criticized for disproportionately targeting blacks and Latinos.
During a rally in Tacoma, Wash., on Monday, Sanders called stop-and-frisk “racist” and said the procedure caused “communities of color to live in fear and humiliation.”
Sanders also told supporters that the U.S. has “a corrupt political system” that enables billionaires to buy elections.
“So today we say to those billionaires who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support candidates who represent the rich and the powerful,” Sanders said. “Today we say to Mayor Bloomberg: we are a democracy, not an oligarchy.”
For her part, Warren tweeted on Tuesday, “It’s a shame Mike Bloomberg can buy his way into the debate. But at least now primary voters curious about how each candidate will take on Donald Trump can get a live demonstration of how we each take on an egomaniac billionaire.”
Warren also fired off another tweet to her nearly 4 million followers, saying Bloomberg “approved and oversaw a program that surveilled and tracked Muslim communities.”
And Biden told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday that while “60 billion dollars can buy you a lot of advertising…it can’t erase your record.”
“The field is going to have to go after Bloomberg because he has had some polling success and spending millions in a race that have been running in for a long time and they’re simply not happy with that,” said Brian Sobel, a San Francisco Bay Area political analyst. “They are going to hit Bloomberg with a lot of issues. “
Beverly believes that Sanders, Biden, and Warren will challenge Bloomberg shamelessly, while Buttigieg will be among the other debaters who will pick their spots.
“It’s in Buttigieg’s best interests to stay above the fray, he’s the fresh face, the moderate alternative,” Beverly says. “Having said that, he will give elbows here, and if he is attacked, he will rely on his military experience to distinguish himself and what the (other candidates) are lacking.”
2. Can Sanders survive his frontrunner status?
Expect Sanders to take his fair share of criticism after strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, and leading polls in Nevada and California.
Bloomberg will likely try to validate his presence on the debate stage and that means directly taking on Sanders. Bloomberg may join Biden and Warren, who have criticized the bad behavior of some of Sanders’ online supporters after they apparently sent threatening messages to members of the influential Culinary Workers Union in Nevada.
Sanders has called such behavior “unacceptable” and preached respect, but the candidates could certainly use the episode to pounce on the frontrunner.
Watch Sanders possibly pivot the attention from himself to make strong comparisons between Bloomberg and Trump.
3. Will Biden and Warren rebound?
Biden and Warren are fighting to keep their presidential hopes alive as the former frontrunners’ campaigns continue to struggle for relevancy with voters.
“If they don’t do well in this debate in Nevada, and start resonating in South Carolina, it likely means the end of the line for one or both of them,” Sobel says. “That’s their reality.”
With Biden’s back against the wall after two subpar showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former vice president desperately needs to have a strong showing in Wednesday’s debate that will translate to getting votes, Sobel says.
“He’s going to have to be all in and focused,” Sobel says. “(Biden) tends to drift off at times. It seems as though he can’t stay on message through an answer.
“This has gotten past the point of his supporters saying, ‘Well, that’s just Joe,’ because it makes him look irrelevant,” Sobel says. “He has a lot riding on the line Wednesday night.”
While Warren will likely go after Bloomberg, she has to really focus on the issues as her mostly male counterparts bicker among themselves, Beverly says.
The Massachusetts senator, Beverly believes, can make a case for herself in Nevada, where more than half of the lawmakers in its legislature are women.
“She is really grappling with the electability fight,” Beverly says about Warren. “Nevada has proven that a woman can win here. She has a chance.”
Biden, who had given himself an above-the-fray persona in previous debates, now has to get in the trenches. He’s criticized Sanders on the debate stage as of late and may feel pressured to up his game.
4. Can Buttigieg and Klobuchar sustain their momentum?
The underdog senator from Minnesota has seen new life in her campaign buoyed by strong debate performances in the past month. That’s morphed into a burst of supporter-themed “Klomentum” to finish third in the New Hampshire primary.
“Klobuchar has done a good job of being the adult in the room on the debate stage,” Beverly says. “Her approach of ‘I didn’t come here to battle amongst family, I came here to represent the people,’ is working and I think she will keep that lane (Wednesday) night.”
Sobel agrees.
“She’s going to have to work extra hard to find her place in the debate navigating through some of the narratives that will be on that stage—the Bloomberg attacks from Sanders and others, to Biden and Warren maintaining relevancy, and Buttigieg trying to find common ground,” he says. “Klobuchar has to find her theme to stand out.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What happens to leftover campaign funds when a candidate drops out of the race?
—Putting politics aside to close the skills gap
—America’s heading for a tax on the middle class
—The case for a national primary
—Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-19--How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances

The 2020 presidential election is still months away, but Americans are bracing themselves for the financial impact—whether from a new administration or a second term for President Donald Trump.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe whoever is elected to the White House will have a direct impact on their personal finances, according to a survey released by FinanceBuzz in January, and about one in three is putting off a big financial decision until after Election Day.
Trump frequently champions the success of the U.S. economy under his administration. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said the country is “in the midst of an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
In 2019 hourly wages increased 2.9%, and unemployment continued to sit at 3.5%—a nearly 50-year low—with 145,000 jobs added in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But this number doesn’t account for those who would like to work but have given up looking for jobs.
The labor participation rate, which includes those who are employed or are actively seeking work, remained unchanged at 63.2%, meaning more than 35% of the population is not working. Labor participation peaked at 67.3% in 2000, but has seen little variance since hitting a more than 30-year low of 62.4% in 2015.
But even for the employed, an overwhelming majority have yet to reach financial security, Christian Weller, senior fellow for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, tells Fortune.
“Costs for health care, housing, and education have outpaced people’s incomes, and families are playing catch-up,” he says.
Here’s a look at how the policies of another Trump administration, a moderate Democratic administration, and a liberal Democratic administration could affect your personal finances.
Another Trump administration
1. Trade benefits automotive and agricultural sectors
In terms of international trade, Trump’s administration has made deals beneficial to some U.S. industries. According to a federal agency’s analysis, the newly signed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will create at least 76,000 jobs in the U.S. automotive sector over five years.
It could be promising for the agricultural sector as well, Weller says, since the agreement allows more U.S. milk, eggs, and turkey to be sold in Canada.
2. Student debt increases
Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration has promoted private and charter schools. The proposed fiscal year 2020 federal budget, for example, suggested a $5 billion plan to support private school scholarships.
Trump’s efforts are good news for those who want their children to go to private school, but public education may increasingly see cuts.
Trump’s budget proposal doesn’t bode well for those planning to pursue higher education, either. The proposed fiscal year 2020 federal budget included eliminating subsidized student loans (meaning student loans would accrue interest before graduation) and limiting repayment plan options. He proposed speeding up loan forgiveness by five years, but only for undergraduate loans.
At the time of the budget proposal publication in March, James Kvaal, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, warned the policies would “raise costs and increase student debt,” making students pay $207 billion more on their loans.
If Trump pursues similar changes in a second term, student borrowers could be seeing more debt in their books and higher bills each month.
3. Health care is privatized, and drug prices are lower
Despite long promising to protect Medicare, Trump has proposed cutting and privatizing the program for the sake of “fiscal sustainability.”
The Executive Order on Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nation’s Seniors, signed last October, paved the way for the privatization of Medicare, says Emily Gee, health economist at the Center for American Progress.
“One proposal in it was to allow doctors to engage in private contracting, which could raise the prices seniors pay for care and subject them to surprise bills,” says Gee. “He has also signaled future changes to network adequacy standards for Medicare Advantage, and as a result, beneficiaries might have a harder time finding in-network providers.”
When it comes to lowering the high costs of prescription drugs, however, Trump has shown initiative. The President is in favor of allowing Americans to purchase lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada, which could force U.S. pharmaceutical companies to lower their own prices.
Trump also backs a bipartisan bill that would place a limit on what Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries pay out of pocket for medications. The bill would also force drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they hike prices beyond the inflation rate, but it does not give the government negotiating power to lower prices.
A moderate Democratic administration
1. Workers earn at least $15 per hour
Whether moderate or left-leaning, nearly every single Democratic presidential candidate supports guaranteeing at least 12 weeks of paid family leave and raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour.
According to a July report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a $15 minimum wage could lift 1.3 million people out of poverty. It could also trigger 1.3 million job losses, but the CBO notes there’s “considerable uncertainty” about the effect of raised wages on employment. Prices would rise to cover businesses’ higher labor expenses, said the CBO, but higher-income families who spend more would absorb most of those costs.
Most Democratic candidates also aim to target wealth inequality by adjusting taxes on capital gains. Former Vice President Joe Biden, for example, has suggested nearly doubling the capital gains tax to nearly 40%.
Such taxes “would only impact those families that have relatively high taxable realized capital gains,” Weller says. “This is not the case for typical middle-class families,” as the law provides exemptions for certain situations including retirement accounts and real estate.
Raising the corporate income tax—as almost any Democratic President would—won’t impact the average American family, either. Trump’s cuts to this tax in 2017 “did not result in faster growth and higher wages,” says Weller. “There is no reason that reversing those tax cuts would do anything other than slowing income and wealth growth at the top.”
While these taxes might not affect the finances of the middle class much, the additional revenues help the government support public programs from which the middle class benefits.
2. Two-year public college is free
According to a 2015 report by Child Care Aware of America, the cost of childcare ranges between $1,500 and $13,000 per year for a school-age child, depending on location. All Democratic candidates are behind reducing these costs, but some—former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren—would make pre-K free only for low-income families.
For secondary education, the vast majority of Democratic candidates support expanding Pell Grants and other such aid. Free two-year public college is also popular among both moderates and liberals.
Klobuchar, Warren, Biden, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer all support making two-year public colleges universally tuition-free, a move that would open up the job market to Americans who previously couldn’t afford higher education.
Buttigieg has a slightly different plan and would make public college free only for those whose family earns less than $100,000 per year (a demographic that, he says, includes 80% of public college students). Those earning between $100,000 and $150,000 would get reduced tuition on a sliding scale.
3. A public health care option increases competition
Health care policy provides the most clear differences between the moderate and liberal Democratic candidates. While Sanders and Warren both support Medicare for All, many of the others don’t think it’s realistic.
Most would create a public option for health care, meaning Americans could choose to pay for insurance like Medicare or Medicaid through the government, but private insurance would still be an option. Under a public option, the general structure of insurance stays the same, but the government would be able to negotiate prices with hospitals and other health care providers. The system could also create competition among private insurers, potentially bringing down prices across the sector.
A public option is the preferred policy of Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Steyer, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. All of these candidates support keeping private insurance as an option, at least for the moment.
Gabbard’s website says she supports “a single-payer system that will allow individuals to access private insurance if they choose.”
Nearly all of the Democratic candidates would expand Affordable Care Act tax credits, so that no family has to spend more than 8.5% of their income on health insurance. Like Trump, all candidates support addressing high prescription drug prices in part by allowing the importation of lower-cost drugs from other countries.
A liberal Democratic administration
1. Wealth tax provides indirect savings
Nearly all Democratic candidates support higher taxes on the wealthy. In addition to hiking up existing structures like the corporate and estate taxes, more left-leaning candidates like Sanders and Warren are joined by Buttigieg and Steyer in backing a wealth tax.
Sanders would put a 1% tax on households worth at least $32 million, and a 8% tax on wealth above $10 billion. Warren favors a 2% tax on households worth more than $50 million, and 3% on those above $1 billion. Steyer, himself a billionaire, supports a 1% tax on wealth exceeding $32 million. Buttigieg has not published an explicit wealth tax plan, but has voiced support for the idea.
These taxes would not directly affect the finances of middle-class families, but would benefit them through programs like student loan forgiveness, Social Security expansion, and affordable health care, according to Weller.
“Wealth taxes can generate a lot of revenue and thus finance programs that benefit middle-class families,” he says. “On net, middle-class families would benefit from wealth taxes and their proposed uses.”
Instead of guaranteeing an income, Sanders prefers a federal job guarantee. With this program, the government either provides public service jobs or subsidizes private sector jobs for the unemployed. Sanders proposed creating jobs through the infrastructure demands of the Green New Deal, early childhood education, and senior citizen care. Warren has said she is open to a similar program.
2. Government pays off student debt
Biden and Steyer, usually more moderate, join Sanders in support of a national, universally free pre-K program. This would ease childcare costs for all families, regardless of income.
For secondary education, the most liberal candidates promise the least amount of debt.
While most Democratic candidates would provide free two-year public college, Sanders and Warren would provide free four-year public college. Buttigieg and Gabbard support this as well, but only for low-income families.
“Without debt burdens, college graduates may be more likely to work in public service fields that typically have lower pay,” says Antoinette Flores, director for postsecondary education policy at the Center for American Progress.
While moderates aim to alleviate this burden with new loan refinancing and payback options, Sanders wants to wipe the slate clean. His administration would cancel or pay off all of the federal and private student loans held by nearly 45 million Americans.
“Education must be an economic right for all, not a privilege for the few,” Sanders wrote in Fortune. Under his plan, the average student loan borrower would save $3,000 per year.
Warren and Bloomberg also support canceling student debt, but their plans are dependent on the borrower’s income. Warren, for example, would cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with household income under $100,000. Those with an income between $100,000 and $250,000 will have varying amounts of debt canceled, while those earning about $250,000 (the top 5%) will have to pay their own way.
Canceling this debt may stimulate the economy and encourage homeownership, says Flores.
“It could also decrease the racial wealth gap,” she adds, “since research has shown that black borrowers are more likely to take on greater student debt burdens and have a more difficult time repaying, in part because of structural inequalities.”
3. Medicare for All eliminates deductibles and co-pays
The signature health care plan of the left is Medicare for All, Sanders’ plan for a single-payer system in which all Americans get all their health coverage from the federal government, eliminating private insurance. Both Sanders and Warren advocate for this program.
Medicare for All would prompt a complete overhaul of U.S. health care, but once implemented, there would be no more networks, premiums, deductibles, co-pays, or surprise bills. The government would be able to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies, and no one would have to pay more than $200 a year for medication.
According to data company Clever, the average American household currently spends $5,000 a year on health care. Even if taxes were to increase slightly to cover Medicare for All, supporters of the program say the savings from lower health care bills would outweigh the costs.
A few candidates—including Sanders, Warren, and Gabbard, according to the Washington Post—support having the government produce and sell generic drugs itself to lower prices in the pharmaceutical industry.
Government production of generics—plus the importation of drugs from abroad—could help increase competition and lower drug prices.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What happens to leftover campaign funds when a candidate drops out of the race?
—Putting politics aside to close the skills gap
—America’s heading for a tax on the middle class
—The case for a national primary
—Can Amazon persuade a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-19--Michael Bloomberg is set to take the debate stage

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
I like to imagine that the Democratic presidential candidates group chat is on fire today.
Michael Bloomberg will be onstage for tonight’s Democratic debate, the first appearance for him, but the ninth for his competitors who have taken the only path available to non-billionaires. Most expect they will come out swinging at the man who has cut to the head of the line.
There was a time when it was hard to imagine that Bloomberg’s own words wouldn’t be enough to derail his bid, but because we live in an upside-down world , those norms have given way long ago. Now, a beleaguered pragmatism from those eager to unseat President Donald Trump appear to make Bloomberg immune to serious scrutiny: Our billionaire is less bad than your billionaire.
That said, there’s much to consider.
Bloomberg’s past words and deeds have been reported afresh since he launched his hat into the race. Numerous lawsuits citing allegations of misogyny, discrimination against women, and a hostile workplace culture at his firm were recently documented by the Washington Post in some detail. It included a now-famous story of a former saleswoman who alleged in a suit that Bloomberg told her to “kill it” when he learned she was pregnant.
There is also his surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers, an ugly cousin to the stop-and-frisk policing tactic for which the former New York City mayor has apologized. This, he continues to defend.
The NYPD program, which baited, spied on, and secretly recorded Muslims, was exposed by a Pulitzer Prize-winning series from the Associated Press in 2011. It confirmed the worst fears of Muslim residents, writes Rowaida Abdelaziz in HuffPost, a wound which his candidacy has reopened. “Many are not only skeptical of Bloomberg as a candidate but also fear the possibility that his rise could lead to more policies that target Muslims at the national level.”
He has yet to fully account for his misrepresentation of the cause of the 2008 recession, and his willingness to remove the racism from redlining.
A video has surfaced of Bloomberg cynically (and grotesquely) dismissing transgender rights as a toxic subject for Democratic candidates trying to reach conservative voters. “If your conversation during a presidential election is about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she, or it can go to the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people,” he said in remarks made at a conference held by the Bermuda Business Development Agency in March 2019.
After Buzzfeed News drew attention to the mostly-ignored YouTube video, the campaign scrambled to reassure voters of Bloomberg’s LGBTQ+ bona fides, including a transgender civil rights bill signed into law his first year as mayor. “Mike is running to defeat Donald Trump and reverse the many policies he has implemented that attack the rights of the transgender community,” the campaign told NBC News.
Tonight, we’ll find out how Bloomberg will fare in his first-ever vetting by his peers as a presidential candidate, whether his past—be it allegations of misogyny or his mayoral record—will be fully examined, and whether his immunity will hold.
Stay tuned.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
Can San Francisco be saved? This is the poignant question my colleague Adam Lashinsky seeks to answer in this important long read; the same city that’s been home to a tech-fueled wealth boom is also plagued by persistent homelessness, and a housing market so inflated that no teacher, cop, or working person can afford to live there. Years of trying to fix the city’s affordable housing and related issues feels like so much “Whac-A-Mole,” and decades of "unique left-vs.-left politics" has ground progress to a halt. Part of the current fight includes staving off market rate housing and the gentrification that it inevitably brings. “Our concern is that Chinatown is the Mission in 1998,” says the deputy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center of the once Latinx, now upscale condo-filled neighborhood. “Chinatown has a deep, historic identity tied to a people-of-color community.”
Fortune
Opera has a blackface problem The Metropolitan Opera’s recent announcement that soprano Anna Netrebko will star in a much-anticipated production of Aida for its opening night gala this season has raised eyebrows among inclusion-focused opera lovers for two reasons. First, it was a missed opportunity to cast a Black soprano to play the role of the Ethiopian princess. But more to the point is that Netrebko has been known to enthusiastically apply skin-darkening makeup for the role—even posting Instagram photos of her in costume, which she was then forced to defend: “Black Face and Black Body for Ethiopien [sic] princess, for Verdi['s] greatest opera! YES!” But, notes culture writer Helen Holmes, “Blackface and opera are historically intertwined to this day in a way that continually boggles the mind.” I suppose a fat lady singing joke is in order here, but who has the energy?
Observer
Chicago’s growing talent pipeline for people of color in tech It’s an experiment in creative recruiting, in the form of a cutting edge program run by re:work training, a nonprofit that helps major tech companies find qualified talent outside of the places where they typically recruit. The free eight-week program in part teaches participants to “speak Silicon Valley”—learning jargon and norms, and walks them through mock interviews. Re:work CEO Shelton Banks says it’s one answer when tech titans say they don’t know where to look for Black and brown talent. “Black and Latinx communities are filled with untapped talent that must overcome historic wage imbalances, undervalued housing markets, and poorer quality schools,” he says.
Chicago Sun Times
Sharon Choi in her own words She was briefly famous mostly for being Academy Award winner Bong Joon Ho’s gracious interpreter, but it’s hard to believe she won’t get there on her own. In this Variety exclusive, Choi tells her story—a student filmmaker plucked from obscurity to speak for her hero on a 10-month journey from premieres and film festivals to the Oscars. “Driven from one crowd to the next, I shook hands with hundreds of people whose eyes shone with the excitement of having watched a special film,” she writes. “Moments alone were still riddled with the absurdity that I was sharing hand sanitizers with a man whose films I’d organized movie nights for in college. Somehow, despite having only micro-short films to my name, I got sucked into the heart of Hollywood.”
Variety
On Background
The trouble with Russell Simmons Please don’t miss this extraordinary long read by journalist, poet, activist, and filmmaker Kevin Powell. Powell grew up enthralled by the hip hop world Russell Simmons helped make, and grew up to be a music journalist who understood what Simmons meant: “[He] is the walking, breathing logo of manifesting something from nothing, of winning on his own terms—the very definitions of hip-hop.” But Simmons is also credibly accused of rape and sexual assault—or is he?—and is now living in extradition-free Bali, and making vague noises about men’s rights in the wake of #MeToo. But hip-hop is complicated, inextricably linked with misogyny and violence, operating in a world which undervalues women, but Black women most of all. Powell goes everywhere he needs to go… and I found myself holding my breath in sections. This piece, and an interview with Simmons, comes in advance of a new documentary featuring Simmons’ accusers, now set to debut on HBO. It’s a film that Oprah briefly signed on to executive produce, until she suddenly changed her mind. Why?
Utne
Shen Yun, explained If you live in one of the cities where the Shen Yun dance troupe performs, then you will appreciate this “review” from Jia Tolentino. First and foremost, it’s affirming: You’re not dreaming, you are being bombarded with pastel-themed, over-the-top advertisements day and night. And they work! “The ads have to be both ubiquitous and devoid of content so that they can convince more than a million people to pay good money to watch what is, essentially, religious-political propaganda—or, more generously, an extremely elaborate commercial for Falun Dafa’s spiritual teachings and its plight vis-à-vis the Chinese Communist regime.” Who knew?
New Yorker
bell hooks on feminism today: “Patriarchy has no gender” So many patriarchal men, especially white men, really felt like feminism had taken something from them,” says author, activist, and educator bell hooks, in a candid interview in Bust. At the time, she was talking about recently elected President Donald Trump, which she called a setback for feminism. But she was addressing a society which has become comfortable hating and fearing powerful women. The setback, and any more to come, should surprise nobody. “Patriarchy has not been deeply challenged enough and changed,” she writes. “The sexism is so deeply, deeply embedded. If you think about public discourses on race in this past year, where are the big public discourses on feminism? They don’t exist.”
Bust
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“There’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25, that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know what their skillsets are, don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”
—Michael Bloomberg


fortune--2020-02-19--How a ’90s cult rock band flourishes despite industry odds

Guided by Voices broke out during the 1990s grunge boom. In 2020, their mainstream peers, like Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, and Pearl Jam, tour in luxury buses and headline Madison Square Garden.
Meanwhile, GBV eat tepid pizza in midsize clubs’ tatty greenrooms and cram their gear, their merch, and themselves into a rental van.
The silver lining? Self-signed and commanding a devout fan base, the band enjoys creative autonomy almost unheard-of for a major rock band.
“I can do whatever I want,” their 62-year-old singer, songwriter, and only original member, Robert Pollard, tells Fortune. “I have no obligations other than making records and playing shows. And these are obligations only to myself as an artist.”
Guided By Voices at First Avenue on Dec. 30, 2018, in Minneapolis. Tony Nelson
Since their last charting album, in 2002, Guided by Voices has taken a loss as streaming overtakes sales, manager David Newgarden says. But Pollard and his current lineup—lead guitarist Doug Gillard, rhythm guitarist Bobby Bare Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March—stay afloat because they never stop swimming. A typical album promotion cycle lasts three years; GBV released three albums in 2019 alone.
Their 30th—and Pollard’s 106th altogether—Surrender Your Poppy Field will be released Feb. 20. (In 2019 they released Zeppelin Over China, Warp and Woof, and Sweating the Plague.)
“We’re actively working and promoting GBV 12 months per year, every year,” Newgarden tells Fortune. “It’s a constant flow.”
Between album releases, they play three-hour shows, mostly in U.S. clubs, while promoting an annual fan gathering, beer partnerships, and a journal series of Pollard’s collages.
Whether through side hustles or sheer productivity, Guided by Voices have carved a more attainable path to rock stardom through artistic integrity and business savvy.
“These days, we work twice as hard to make half as much money,” Newgarden says, but Guided by Voices make it work.
The band in London, July 1999. David Tonge—Getty Images
Recording separately
Guided by Voices made their 1990s classics in garages and basements, but their current lineup is spread across four states, and they record while more than 600 miles apart. Pollard makes a demo, the band members learn it individually, then they rehearse and record at Serious Business Music in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. Pollard often tracks his vocals at Stillwater Lodge, an event rental and Airbnb space in Dayton.
“I used to have to learn the songs on guitar and teach them to my band. I don’t have to anymore,” Pollard says.
“We all typically work on rehearsing and learning the songs individually at first,” Shue tells Fortune.
This remote technique is made possible by Travis Harrison, GBV’s engineer and producer who runs Serious Business. “Bob’s writing sometimes happens almost spontaneously,” he tells Fortune. “I focus on keeping the flow of the process intact.”
“Everything is running smoothly, especially in the recording department,” Pollard says. “I’d like very much not to screw that up.”
After an album is written, recorded, mixed, and mastered, it’s released on the band’s in-house label.
Signing to GBV Inc.
Guided by Voices first took a stab at creating their own label in 1992, when they released Propeller on a run of 500 records with individually homespun artwork. Lacking a label at the time, Pollard dreamed up his own—Rockathon, referenced in the Propeller ballad “Weedking.”
Propeller was meant as their last before Pollard—then an elementary school teacher—prioritized his day job for good. Instead, it broke Guided by Voices into indie stardom, leading them to sign to Scat Records for 1994’s Bee Thousand. (After Matador Records signed GBV and advanced them almost $100,000, they recorded 1995’s Alien Lanes for $10.)
In 1996, Pollard and childhood friend Pete Jamison rebooted Rockathon to release GBV odds and ends separately from Matador. Today, it’s run by Matt Davis and Mike “Heed” Lipps as GBV Inc.’s financial and operational wing. They ship about 5,000 packages a month on stolen weeknights and weekends.
“We all have 8-to-5 jobs,” Davis tells Fortune,” [so] Rockathon ‘day-to-day’ doesn’t exist.”
“It’s a labor of love that we’re honored to do,” Lipps tells Fortune.
Davis and Lipps coordinate with the band’s distribution partner, Revolver, record pressing plants, and the printing company for EAT, Pollard’s ongoing journal of his collages.
Two samples of Pollard’s collages: “Big Side Effects” (left) and “Go Back for More Legitimate Risks” (right). Courtesy of robertpollardart.com
Selling art
Rockathon’s art department is run by Joe Patterson and Pollard’s wife, Sarah Zade-Pollard. When it comes time to create a GBV album layout, Pollard, a prolific collagist, often meets Patterson at Wings, a Dayton sports bar, with new works at the ready.
“Some of [them] can fit in the palm of your hand, and others are as big as a poster,” Patterson tells Fortune.
Aside from album art, Pollard sells original works on RobertPollardArt.com, an online gallery run by Zade-Pollard. “Most mornings are spent processing orders,” she tells Fortune. “He’ll often ask me my opinion on colors or a particular image’s placement within a piece.”
Zade-Pollard also prepares certificates of authenticity, corresponds with buyers, and sets up art showings at galleries like the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination in Pittsburgh.
It’s certainly not all mundane admin work, though: Guided by Voices are a hard-partying band, and that figures into their business as well.
Buckets labeled “Piss” and “Puke” sit onstage as Guided by Voices performed what was billed as their “final show” on Dec. 30, 2004, at the Metro in Chicago. Matt Carmichael—Getty Images
Throwing a fan convention
Almost every year, Lipps throws Heedfest, a rambunctious bash in Dayton for the GBV devoted. There are only two rules, as per the website: “1) Love Bob. 2) No Assholes.”
Heedfest began as a low-key barbecue and kickback in 2007 before ballooning into a three-day party. In 2019—which, Lipps says, was their most successful year to date—they offered all-you-can-drink Miller Lite and cover bands with names like Giant Bug Village and the Textbook Committee, as well as a performance from GBV themselves.
“Where else can you meet your rock heroes, talk to them, and share a few beers?” Lipps asks.
Guided by Voices’ songbook is full of boozy anthems like “Drinker’s Peace” and “How’s My Drinking?” and Pollard’s onstage bit—mic in one hand, beer (after beer) in the other—has led to branding opportunities.
Partnering with breweries
In 2014, Dogfish Head launched “BEER Thousand,” an imperial lager, in honor of the 20th anniversary of Bee Thousand. Its founder, Sam Calagione, is a GBV fan who listened to the band while drawing up plans for the company.
“DIY is in the blood of Dogfish Head,” Calagione said in a promotional video, “and DIY is definitely in the blood of GBV.”
More GBV brews have followed: In 2017, Foam Brewers released Guided by Voices IPA, and in 2019, Branch and Bone Artisan Ales released Hold on Hops lager. The band also headlines craft beer events like OctFest in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
“No band sells as much beer per customer,” Newgarden says of GBV’s live show. And at the dawn of the decade, he says, they performed their longest one ever—by far.
The indie rockers Guided by Voices played a 100-song, nearly five-hour set to a sold-out crowd in Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom on New Year’s Eve 2019. MIchael Nigro
Performing 100 songs in a row
Last New Year’s Eve, Guided by Voices played a staggering 100 songs without a break at Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom. Despite the show’s length (4 hours and 20 minutes) and the physical exertion required to meet it, the band pulled it off.
“I don’t know if it could’ve gone any better,” Gillard tells Fortune.
“Most bands don’t come close to having 100 songs in their career,” Harrison says.
At $100-per-ticket admission in a sold-out 600-capacity room, plus sales of T-shirts, records, and CDs, and a poster of the setlist, the New Year’s blowout was arguably a cash boost. It helps that the band’s rider and overhead are negligible.
“All we need is beer, a bottle of tequila, a bloody Mary bar, a deli tray, and two large pizzas after a show,” Pollard says. “We’re easy.”
Aside from drumming for hours on end, March drives the van, sets up merch, collects payment from the venue, checks into hotels, and keeps morale high overall.
“[I] make sure Bob gets to the venue when he would like to be there,” he tells Fortune. “Tour managing is kind of second nature to me.”
Pollard at the Reading Festival in 2002, left, and in Las Vegas in 2010, right. Hayley Madden—Redferns/Getty Images; Denise Truscello—Getty Images
Post Surrender Your Poppy Field, Guided by Voices have two more 2020 albums in the can.
And as the band rides the buzz of the 100-song set, Newgarden aims to keep their bottom line “thrifty and efficient” while being receptive to unconventional promotion ideas.
“We are excited about what we are doing,” Harrison says. “We all love each other.”
Pollard concurs: “It’s got good energy.”
At the 100-song blowout, Guided by Voices pulled out one of many deep cuts: 2014’s “The Littlest League Possible,” a song staking Pollard’s claim on his modest kingdom, which was left off setlists for five years but brought back at the L.A. club.
“To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond,” he sang to disciples in the pit, “on the littlest island where I shall reside.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—With Sonic the Hedgehog big at box office, Paramount catches “lightning in a bottle”
—Rob McElhenney on exploring misogyny and censorship in gaming with Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet
—Portrait of a Lady on Fire filmmaker Céline Sciamma on the female gaze and her ‘architecture of desires’
—Contagion writer, scientific adviser reflect on film’s newfound relevance amid coronavirus crisis
—Ava DuVernay on the “radical act” of black love in OWN’s Cherish the Day
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-19--China’s high smoking rate may be exacerbating the coronavirus outbreak

The death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak has now topped 2,000 people. But while cases have spread to at least 28 countries beyond China, the vast majority of those deaths—all but six of them—have been in mainland China.
That’s not surprising, to some extent, given that the virus causing the respiratory illness COVID-19 originated in China, and given the nation’s high population density, among other factors. But there may be another underlying cause behind the severity of symptoms and number of coronavirus deaths in China: the country’s sky-high smoking rate among men.
More than 52% of Chinese males ages 15 and over are regular smokers compared with just 2.7% of females, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There are more than 300 million smokers in the country, which accounts for 40% of total worldwide tobacco consumption.
Chinese men make up a disproportionate share of coronavirus infections and deaths, according to several recent studies. One report found that nearly 60% of examined cases occurred in men; others have pegged the number at anywhere between the mid- to high- 50s. The median age of patients ranges from about 47 years to 56 years, depending on the report.
A new review of infections published Monday also found a disparity in death rates. Among men, the coronavirus was found to have a 2.8% fatality rate. For women, the number was 1.7%.
While there are multiple risk factors for coronavirus infection, medical experts told Fortune that smoking may also be fueling the asymmetric number of COVID-19 deaths in men. Smoking could potentially make someone both more susceptible to infection and less able to fight it off given the medical conditions associated with tobacco use.
There are three possible ways that smoking may be driving these disparities, Dr. Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, said: Patients with hypertension or heart disease (both associated with smoking) appear more susceptible to the virus; smokers are more prone to contracting the flu, and coronavirus infection can occur simultaneously with influenza; and there is growing evidence that a key biological marker that the current coronavirus strain binds to is far more prevalent in smokers than in nonsmokers.
“The question is whether smoking has a direct impact on the coronavirus,” said Hotez. “And preliminary evidence suggests that may be the case.”
A biological marker (or biomarker) is, simply put, an indicator of some kind that can be measured in biological samples like blood work that would show something abnormal like an infection. A study published last week by University of South Carolina researchers supports the thesis that smoking is linked with a higher amount of the biomarker associated with coronavirus infection. “We observed significantly higher ACE2 gene expression in smoker samples compared to nonsmoker samples,” wrote the authors. “This indicates the smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and thus smoking history should be considered in identifying susceptible population and standardizing treatment regimen.”
Viruses bind to specific receptors, and in the case of coronavirus, ACE2 is a key target. “ACE2 is more prevalent in the lower part of the respiratory tract, it’s more prevalent in men than in women, and it’s more prevalent in smokers,” Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, said. “If you’re older, have bad lungs, smoke, you’re not going to fare as well with the coronavirus.”
There was a similar disparity between men’s and women’s death rates during the SARS outbreak of 2003, which was also caused by a strain of coronavirus.
The question is, How can such information be leveraged to tackle the outbreak or determine which populations are most in need of a vaccine—once one is actually developed?
Rizzo doubts that smoking status will be a direct factor in whether or not someone is vaccinated. Given the difficulty of developing a vaccine during an ongoing outbreak and inevitable supply constraints, high-risk populations will likely be prioritized during a vaccination drive.
“I don’t think smoking by itself will be a good figure to use,” said Rizzo. “It’s going to be whether these people are impaired on an immune system level.” That might mean having an underlying respiratory condition like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or a similar ailment—conditions that may well be caused by smoking.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How the coronavirus may spread around the world
—MWC trade show customers seek refunds after last-minute cancelation
—In China, oil won’t be the only energy sector battered by the coronavirus
—Why it’s so hard for China’s factories to get back to work
—Coronavirus may be the straw that breaks the back of oil fracking
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-19--Bottoms up: Wine’s going to cost less in 2020

Wine down Wednesdays could be a lot more budget friendly this year.
A State of the Wine Industry report from Silicon Valley Bank says wine growers are facing an “acute oversupply” that will result in lower prices in 2020 and likely for several years to come.
“Acute oversupply will allow for better-quality juice in lower-priced bottles, which will improve value and may provide an incentive for some millennials to become more consistent wine buyers,” said Rob McMillan, executive vice president and founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s wine division, as well as the author of the report.
That surplus comes right as wine consumption is waning. Last year saw the first wine volume decrease since 1994, according to the IWSR, which tracks beverage alcohol consumption in America. Still, wine sales were down 1.5%, falling to their lowest levels since 2016.
Those shortfalls came due to the industry’s failure to connect with millennials and boomers, McMillan says. While the quality of wine has never been better, winemakers and marketers are missing the mark with consumers.
“Current oversupply in California and Washington isn’t due to speculative overplanting,” he wrote. “It’s due to the wine industry’s growing miss in not providing consumers what they want. … The U.S. wine industry needs to adapt and change its focus and direction.”
Those missteps might lead to an industry consolidation as well. McMillan predicts vineyard removals as wineries try to balance supply and demand. And vineyards that don’t have strong management teams could find themselves in jeopardy.
“The past 25 years was an era where the rising tide of consumer demand lifted the boats of everyone in the wine business,” he said. “We consistently saw increasing volumes and prices for premium wine during that period, and throughout it, every business model seemingly worked. But as we evolve into this new era where the tide is slack or receding, all boats won’t float, and we will have winners and losers.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The drinks America’s best bartenders make for themselves
—Miami’s Balloo is a personal tribute to the chef’s Chinese, Indian, and Trinidadian roots
—Inside the most influential fashion show in menswear
—5 things Madewell’s CEO always packs when traveling
—WATCH: Can San Francisco Be Saved?
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-21--Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra: A big phone that takes amazing photos

We know something essential about the coronavirus .
We ’ re not doing anything about it

In its black packaging, or even set on a counter, Samsung’s new Galaxy S20 Ultra looks similar to any other modern smartphone. Only after picking up the device do you realize that it’s the goliath of phones.
The Ultra is the biggest model in Samsung’s new three-phone lineup, unveiled last week. It also has another distinction: A camera that comes with a zoom lens that’s supposed to be more powerful than what’s has been included in any phone before it.
Samsung sent Fortune an Ultra to review on Thursday, so consider this to be merely a first impression of it based on one day of use. Next week, we’ll be back with a more complete review.
Though it’s rather costly, starting at $1,400, the Ultra may be good for people who depend on their phones more than PCs or laptops. And for serious photographers who want to use a phone camera, it simply can’t be matched.
Is that an Ultra in your pocket?
First, let’s discuss the Ultra’s size: It has a 6.9-inch screen compared with 6.7 inches for its sister phone, the S20+, and 6.2 for the regular S20. In fact, Ultra’s screen is bigger than iPhone 11 Pro Max’s 6.5-inch screen along with that of the comparatively tiny 6.3-inch Google Pixel 4 XL.
Despite its size, the Ultra isn’t much heavier than its rivals. At 220 grams (or just under 8 ounces), it’s a few grams lighter than the iPhone 11 Pro Max and 27 grams heavier than the Pixel 4 XL.
When held in the hand, though, the Ultra’s big screen is nearly impossible to operate with one hand. I regularly had to use two hands to use the phone. For example, the phone’s amazing camera features—more about those later—sometimes required that I use my right hand to hold the phone and press the shutter while using my left hand to adjust the settings. It also tended to slide out of the back pocket of my pants while I was seated, a problem I’d never had with other phones.
The best phone zoom lens
And that brings us to the cameras, which truly differentiate Ultra from other mainstream phones. To start with, the back of the phone has an enormous, rectangular camera bump with four lenses and a flash.
The regular camera has a sensor with 108 megapixels, more than any other popular phone. Theoretically, at least, the Ultra can provide more detail than competitors’ cameras with 12, 16, or 24-megapixel resolutions. But sometimes adding more megapixels results in photos with mushy details or muted colors. Although the pictures I took with the main lens looked great, it will take more than a day of testing to render a verdict on the 108-megapixel sensor.
But it’s Ultra’s zoom lens that truly sets the Ultra apart. Most other phones have a zoom lens that can magnify a subject two or three times before requiring software tricks to zoom more. But those techniques usually degrade image quality.
The Ultra, however, has a 10-times optical zoom that works incredibly well. The pictures the phone takes at 10-times magnification are clear and detailed, as you can see in this shot of a Mini Wheats cereal box. On the left is a cropped picture from the Ultra. On the right is a similar cropped shot from the iPhone 11 Pro taken from the same distance at 10-times magnification, which relies on software to zoom in. The difference is striking.
A 10 times zoomed image. The picture from the Samsung S20 Ultra is on the left and from an iPhone 11 Pro on the right.
How did Samsung do it? It used a rather clever trick.
Samsung invented a new way to install the lens. Instead of protruding from the back of the phone, as all phone lenses have in previous phones, the Ultra’s longer and more powerful lens is tucked inside the phone and placed sideways. To bring the image into the lens, the phone has a prism to reflect light into the lens at an angle.
It’s the same principle that lets a submarine skipper use a periscope to see what’s happening on the ocean’s surface.
In addition to the Ultra’s big-league zoom, the phone comes with software to enhance images even more. Samsung says its technology can provide the equivalent of 100-times magnification.
Sitting in a coffee shop, I was able to use the phone to read employee shift assignments on a clipboard behind the counter a good 20-feet away. Well, maybe not exactly read. The problem with the 100-times zoom magnification is that the images are somewhat fuzzy because it’s difficult to hold your hands still enough. Combined with the loss of detail that comes from using software to increase zoom, and the picture quality is underwhelming.
Ready for better 5G
One of the Ultra’s other signature features—5G compatibility— isn’t quite ready for prime time. Samsung’s S20 lineup is among the first to be able to connect to all of the various flavors of 5G available in the U.S. That includes the superfast 5G that Verizon offers in some cities as well as the not quite so fast type that T-Mobile and AT&T have rolled out more broadly (both carriers also sell the superfast variety, but in more limited areas).
Currently, it’s difficult to test how well the Ultra connects to both kinds of 5G because none of the carriers have made both flavors available in one location. Stay tuned, because that should change soon.
Until then, you’ll have to just be satisfied uploading your amazing Ultra photos on good old 4G.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—HTC CEO on the company’s “new vision,” VR, and Facebook rivalry
—New, online A.I. course targets an important market: bosses
—Can San Francisco be saved?
—Did the ‘techlash’ kill Alphabet’s city of the future?
—How wireless carriers rank on 5G speeds
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fortune--2020-02-20--We know something essential about the coronavirus. We’re not doing anything about it

Roger Stone sentenced to more than three years in prison for Trump cover-up

This is the web version of Brainstorm Health Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top health care news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good afternoon, Dailies. This is Cliff, back in the driver’s seat for the newsletter for the rest of the week as Sy gets a break.
As of Thursday (Feb. 20), the outbreak of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 has infected more than 75,000 people and killed 2,130. While nearly all of the illness and death so far has occurred in China, where the outbreak began late last year, the virus has managed to sneak across nearly 30 national borders. Indeed, one significant development is that, after being largely contained to mainland China, the disease seems to be gaining a foothold (rather than a mere toehold) in several other Asian nations. South Korea now has 104 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering, which maintains a daily dashboard for COVID-19; Japan has 94; Singapore, 84.
While it’s possible that the outbreak can be brought under control in the coming weeks or months, the concern among many experts is that things will get far worse before they get better. There are three reasons.
Call the first naivete: Humans seem to have no or little existing immunity to this novel strain of coronavirus. Second is pathogenicity: The virus has the ability to replicate efficiently in our bodies and can cause death or at least serious illness in many. And third is transmissibility: The microbe appears to pass easily from human to human. These are the textbook conditions for a pandemic.
With regard to the last, it’s not yet clear precisely how this virus spreads, though there appear to be multiple routes for transmission, including one newly suspected mode, fecal-to-oral spread. As for its pathogenicity, that’s evident as well. Though a large number of cases seem to be limited to relatively mild flu-like symptoms, roughly one in five of those infected get seriously ill. (The numbers requiring more substantial care might actually be much higher than that. According to one JAMA study published earlier this month, 26% of 138 patients in one hospital in Wuhan, China required treatment in the intensive care unit.)
Perhaps no surprise, much of the coverage has focused on these two factors—how and where it’s spreading and how sick people are getting. But the third issue—the strain’s newness to humans—ought to get far more attention than it has. The simple reason is that understanding the emergence of this virus can help us prevent the next pandemic.
Coronaviruses are incredibly plentiful and diverse. Two strains in particular, 229E and OC43, cause a large share of the common cold and other respiratory infections we mortals get each winter. The overwhelming majority of coronavirus strains affect mammals other than humans, however. The danger comes when one or more mutations enable a virus to “jump” from another species to man—a process called zoonosis. Two highly pathogenic strains, SARS and MERS-CoV (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome), which each morphed from a bat-infecting coronavirus, have killed hundreds of people in recent outbreaks.
The sheer scale of these viral vaults is mindboggling. More than half of all human pathogens are believed to have jumped from animal viruses. “The three most devastating pandemics in human history, the Black Death, Spanish influenza, and HIV/AIDS, were caused by zoonoses, as were 60–76% of recent emerging infectious disease events,” wrote UCLA’s James O. Lloyd-Smith and colleagues in a widely cited 2009 Science paper. “We need models to reveal the points of vulnerability where intervention against zoonoses will be most effective, and to highlight the gaps in data collection. We need to know when particular zoonotic phases, i.e., reservoir transmission, spillover from animals to humans, stuttering transmission or incipient outbreaks among humans, can be targeted to optimize epidemiological outcomes while reducing cost.”
The good news is that, a decade later, we’re getting closer to deciphering these mysteries. We now have much better tools to identify zoonotic jumps—and importantly, to predict them—says Seth Berkley, the CEO of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, who is also a renowned medical epidemiologist.
Nonetheless, in a classic case of shortsightedness, we are currently starving the field of the investment it needs. Consider the 2021 federal budget that President Trump submitted to Congress earlier this month. The President requested $550 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s entire program for researching and fighting emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases—$85 million less than the previous year’s allotment and less than 4% of what the President proposed for his new “space force.” (The total 2021 budget request for the CDC is about $5.6 billion, roughly a third of the space force haul.)
Presidential budgets aren’t just negotiating tools, of course; they’re mission statements. They tell us what the nation values and what we hope to accomplish—or, in this case, what we fear and hope to protect ourselves against. So what may be even more frightening than the actual dollars invested is the message: We’re not going to do much to stop the next pandemic.
As Berkley posed to me over the phone this morning: “Is this the big one or not—Who the hell knows? But if this is not the big one, it’s a very expensive and severe dress rehearsal for the big one. How do we get the world to pay attention to that?”
An urgent question.
Clifton Leaf, Editor in Chief, FORTUNE
clifton.leaf@fortune.com
@CliftonLeaf
DIGITAL HEALTH
Using deep learning to discover antibiotics. More on this soon—but I wanted to highlight a new piece published in the journal Cell about the prospect of using machine learning to discover promising new antibiotic candidates. This "deep learning" model from MIT researchers could, theoretically, spur the development of antibiotics by leveraging a "neural network capable of predicting molecules with antibacterial activity." In simpler terms: An algorithm might be able to identify antibiotic candidates that are different from the ones which exist today—a critical mission given the dearth of new antibiotics over the past few decades and the rise of "superbugs." (Cell)
INDICATIONS
The AbbVie-Allergan critics sound their latest alarm. A compendium of consumer groups and unions have been reprising their efforts to scuttle drug giant AbbVie's mega-deal to buy Allergan. The former firm markets the world's best-selling drug, Humira; the latter hawks Botox, among a number of other blockbuster treatments. For the deal to close, AbbVie and Allergan have agreed to a number of divestitures to address antitrust concerns. That doesn't quite go far enough, according to critics that include 17 consumer organizations and unions. In a letter, the groups maintained that divesting an experimental anti-inflammatory drug to British drug maker AstraZeneca would do little to quell AbbVie's dominance in the space. AbbVie's Humira has brought in nearly $20 billion in annual sales in recent years, and the company had another treatment called Skyrizi approved to treat psoriasis (and inflammatory disorder) last year.
THE BIG PICTURE
Coronavirus cases are falling in China—but vigilance is still critical. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that the number of new coronavirus cases in China is falling—but that's no reason to get lazy. "We are encouraged by this trend but this is no time for complacency," said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday. As Cliff wrote, the death toll from coronavirus now stands at more than 2,000 people, nearly all of them in China. But the WHO is being extra cautious because of the potential for the pathogen's spread in other nations with weaker health systems. Vigilance remains the top priority. (Reuters)
REQUIRED READING
Should CEOs stay on the board after they step down? by Geoff Colvin
Where are the billions in donations to fight coronavirus going? by Eamon Barrett
How to failure proof your diversity initiative, by Ellen McGirt
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