fortune--2020-04-24--Coronavirus turns the outdoor industry’s crucial spring season into its most challenging in years

Ashleigh Diaz should be wrapping up hiring for her busy season about now. When the coronavirus pandemic really took hold in her area, Diaz, the managing partner at 4Corners Riversports, based in Durango, Colo., was on track to finding the additional 20 employees she needs each summer to help sell kayaks, rafts, and camping gear.
But then COVID-19-related nonessential business shutdowns started, and Diaz quickly realized things were going to be different. She took down her job ads, and, when she can finally reopen her business, doesn’t plan on reposting. Instead, Diaz and her business partners, along with their staff of eight year-round employees, will adapt to what is going to be an unpredictable summer.
Outdoor retailers, of course, aren’t alone in their concern about business in the wake of COVID-19. But the nearly $900 billion outdoor recreation industry’s heavy reliance on the spring and summer seasons makes the common issues particularly acute, and the need to pivot immediate.
“It is a terrible time for our retailers to be shut down,” says Gordon Seabury, CEO at Toad&Co, a sustainable clothing company. “Yes, there’s a holiday cycle, but much more, spring season is the big season.”
There are some reasons to be optimistic: “People are gung ho to go outside,” Diaz says. Certainly, cities across the country are seeing their parks and greenways crowded, as being outside is one of the only permitted pastimes. When shelter-in-place orders are lifted, it is reasonable to expect that people will want to raft, hike, bike, and paddle, having exhausted all their Netflix streaming, says Lise Aangeenbrug, executive director of the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA).
But if lockdowns last months, rather than weeks, and temporary unemployment becomes permanent, it is harder to predict what gear consumers will buy and what outdoor experiences they will be able to afford.
Pulling out a crystal ball to understand the coming outdoor season is further clouded because of supply chain issues. Many outdoor products—including paddleboards, water bottles, and mass-market bikes—are made in China. Even before COVID-19 there were concerns about retailers getting affordable products for the summer season, owing to additional tariffs, and many had been urged to place orders in advance or expect delays and price hikes. When Chinese factories shut down as a result of COVID-19, concerns about shortages continued to mount. Now, Chinese factories have largely caught up, albeit with a few weeks’ delay, but U.S. retailers are closed, or open for online sales only, and don’t necessarily have the ability to receive, store, and sell what they’ve ordered. Retailers who thought they were avoiding one problem by ordering tariff-free U.S.-made gear are getting whacked by the temporary closure of some manufacturers, like the Wisconsin-based Bending Branches, maker of its namesake and Aqua-Bound paddles.
So retailers are adjusting. Diaz delayed her orders for everything except oars and coolers. She doesn’t want to cancel them outright, because products are limited, and if demand comes back, she doesn’t want her shelves to be bare, but she also doesn’t want to get stuck with too much gear that she can’t move.
“We are more concerned about demand versus supply,” says Camilla Yanushevsky, an equity research analyst at investment firm CFRA, who covers Dick’s Sporting Goods and other retailers.
Big retailers, like Dick’s, REI, and Walmart, the country’s largest sporting goods retailer, have their orders in and, for the most part, on the shelves. Walmart remains open in most communities, thanks to its essential grocery business, and other large retailers have amped up their online marketplaces. Dick’s pre-COVID-19 investment in its e-commerce channel is why Yanushevsky and CFRA rate it a “buy.”
At the 31-year-old Gruene Outfitters in New Braunfels, Texas, setting up a website with an e-commerce component had been on owner Tiffany Yeates’s mind for several years. But while running two connected outdoor retailers (Gruene Outfitters is the fly shop and men’s clothing store; The Pomegranate carries women’s and kids’ clothing), she never had the time. Since shuttering their brick-and-mortar doors on March 20, she has gone full force on setting up as an online retailer. Yeates personally is receiving the shipments of product she thought would sell for Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, although space is getting tight, as well as delivering fishing gear herself while her staff puts products online and works on processes for online orders. While the shops get a lot of tourist activity, locals do support the fly shop. But the lack of spring breakers this year meant fewer flip-flop sales, and that’s a challenge for both sales and space. “We have nine boxes of OluKai flip-flops we’d normally be mowing through right now,” says store manager Ashlee Newman.
“This is the first time I have appreciated e-commerce,” Yeates says. “I appreciate the physical store, and I don’t like online shopping, but I see how it is important not to have all your eggs in one basket. We will always have an online store now.”
Manufacturers are aware of the challenges facing these retailers, and they’re trying to develop solutions. “It was specialty retailers who took a chance on us 20 years ago,” Seabury says. While Toad&Co sells through its own catalog and online shop, it also relies on independent outdoor retailers to sell its sustainable clothing. Toad&Co had been working on supply chain issues for months, and even pre-COVID-19 knew they might have to figure out new ways to support their retailers. The company had been testing a revenue-sharing program with Chattanooga-based Rock/Creek, that would give the retailer a percentage of corporate online sales. The test prepared Toad&Co to roll out several different initiatives, including one where retailers who have temporarily closed their brick-and-mortar doors can opt in to get 30% of sales from certain orders, either as a credit on balances due or as a check.
Other manufacturers are offering similar promotions, including Austin-based Duck Camp and EcoVessel of Boulder. Hala Gear, based in Steamboat Springs, Colo., is offering retailers a rare preseason boost of 15% from the sale of its inflatable paddleboards, but only through the brand’s brick-and-mortar shops, not through its own online store. Many outdoor manufacturers are using hashtags such as #saveyourshop and #saveyourlocalgearshop to bolster their retailers just as supporters of independent bookstores and restaurants have.
But Seabury wanted to go beyond that. “This is not time to panic, but rather to work together collectively and thoughtfully,” he says. With the support of OIA he is encouraging brands to stop discounting product via their e-commerce sites and, instead, to hold prices steady through June or July. If manufacturers must discount, he recommends passing that discount on to retailers, so that they can cut prices for consumers without cutting into their margins. OIA is also recommending that manufacturers push back delivery of fall merchandise so that retailers can catch up once they reopen.
“The stimulus package is at least giving people some surety,” Seabury says, noting that online orders for gear direct to consumers have remained as high as 75% of what’s normal for some retailers. But shuttered specialty retailers, like Gruene Outfitters, are faced with winter inventory that would have sold on sale this spring.
“While we hope that people will be able to find enjoyment and some stress release in getting outdoors and on the water during this time, unfortunately the short view looks grim for Main Street retailers and those of us who supply them,” says Lili Colby, chief PFDiva at MTI Life Jackets of Plymouth, Mass. “We have a warehouse full of product that our largest customers—Dick’s Sporting Goods and REI—have put the brakes on. It’s unlikely that we can make up this volume through our consumer direct sales on mtilifejackets.com.” Colby is concerned about the seasonality of the industry, and the fact that the 29-year-old business may not have the liquidity to see it through to 2021.
OIA’s Aangeenbrug agrees that outdoor specialty shops might not truly face the fallout from this year’s temporary closures and supply chain disruptions until next year. “There might be a shortage of product in 2021, or if I still have product from spring 2020 and haven’t sold it, do I keep that and sell that in 2021? Are we going to have a glut of product in the market? If you are a supplier or manufacturer the last thing you want to do is lose your retailers,” she says.
Even before COVID-19 temporarily shuttered factories in China and delayed shipments of sporting goods leading up to the spring and summer season, the outdoor industry was already pushing back on what Richard W. Harper Jr., manager of international trade for OIA, calls already high tariffs: “When you place a 25% tariff on top of an existing 17.6% tariff on a backpack, it is hard to try to absorb those costs.” Some manufacturers had planned overseas trips to look at alternatives to production in China in response to the latest tariffs, but those trips were postponed owing to coronavirus travel restrictions and concerns.
Suspension of payment on import duties was not part of the stimulus package, but Harper and others hope that a 90-day delay could be passed administratively to help manufacturers adjust.
“Initially, we were having supply issues in January,” says Jon Fox, CEO of EcoVessel, which produces its sustainable water bottles in China. One music festival got delayed because of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, and an order of custom cups was delayed. Fox hired two drivers to hightail it from the port to the festival. They arrived in the middle of the second day of the festival; EcoVessel supplied compostable beer cups for the first day.
Dana Howe, retailer relations manager at Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, a trade association with 73 retailer members (representing 130 stores nationwide), says most members are reporting that they can get what they need for online sales, save for items like freeze-dried foods, because demand is up across the board. But they do expect they will be more conservative in what they order for 2021, a process that typically starts in June (and one of the reasons Seabury is urging manufacturers to consider pushing back this timeline).
Like Seabury and OIA, Grassroots Outdoor Alliance is asking manufacturers to extend dates on invoices, place incoming orders on “call before ship” status, and remove order cancellation and hold restrictions. But Howe knows that may not be possible. “While many have been very supportive of these requests, lots of vendors in the outdoor industry are small companies, too, and have greater difficulty in helping with some of those asks.”
Still, the outdoor industry tends to be recession-proof, and its advocates are optimistic. “A couple of years ago we had a huge drought, and we are still recovering from that,” says 4Corners’ Diaz. “But we can crawl out of any hole and get back to what we love, getting people back on the water.”
More must-read retail coverage from Fortune:
—Retailers that are smartest about shopping tech will finish on top after the coronavirus has receded
—Target’s April e-commerce has nearly quadrupled as crowd controls slam in-store sales
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy season during coronavirus uncertainty
—The comfort economy gains momentum during the coronavirus pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The greatest designs of modern times
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-24--Facebook debuts Zoom-like video chat feature called Messenger Rooms

You ’ re the breadwinner in the relationship .
Now what ?

Facebook is rolling out a new feature as part of its Messenger service that looks a lot like Zoom as more people video chat during the coronavirus pandemic.
The feature, called Messenger Rooms, will allow up to 50 people to participate in a video chat through a link. While Messenger will host the chat, participants do not need to be a user of any of Facebook’s services to access the room. Rooms can be scheduled for a specific time but can also be spontaneously created. Facebook will show rooms that aren’t set as private to friends that the host actively interacts with by listing it at the top of the screen. That allows friends to pop into a room, even without an invitation.
Facebook has already started to roll out Messenger Rooms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects it to be a leading videoconferencing product even though it faces stiff competition from Google and Zoom. Zoom’s stock dropped 10%, trading at $159.87 per share, after the Facebook announcement.
“We already have leading, if not the leading, video calling and live video services,” Zuckerberg said. “I think we’re soon going to have the leading video rooms product for social use cases as well.”
During the announcement, Zuckerberg tried to reassure users that the new feature won’t have the same security issues as “other” services. Zoom, which has experienced explosive growth during the pandemic, has come under fire for security flaws that allow random people to hijack rooms and fill them with hate speech or nude or violent images. Zoom has tried to fix the issues with its latest updates.
“We’ve been very careful to try to learn the lessons of how we’ve seen other people trying to misuse other videoconference and video presence tools during this period,” he said.
Facebook’s latest video product releases were announced over Facebook Live in lieu of original plans to debut them at the company’s annual F8 conference. The tools also come as Facebook is working to make itself a more privacy-focused network with an emphasis on groups and private messaging—all of which have become even more important during the outbreak.
In addition to Messenger Rooms, Zuckerberg announced the company is integrating Facebook Live, a feature that allows users to live-stream, with Facebook Events. This lets users create live streams as part of their events, as more people opt to host virtual events. Zuckerberg said he expects Facebook to “eventually” allow event hosts to charge for live streams so people can make money off things like classes and performances.
“We hope this will help support creators and small businesses that rely on in-person services,” he said.
Facebook is also doubling the number of people who can video chat together on WhatsApp from four to eight and is introducing digital backgrounds for Messenger calls and chats. Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook is raising the bar with new A.I.-powered tools and effects by debuting a 360-degree virtual background that will move and maintain perspective as a user moves around his or her environment.
“It’ll really feel like you’re in a house or jungle or whatever you’re in,” he said.
Zuckerberg said in addition to creating new features to meet the rising demand for video, Facebook is also seeing an uptick in sales of Portal, an in-home video product the company launched in 2018. Sales of the product have grown 10-fold, and the company is “working as hard as we can to make more of them,” he said.
“Overall, we’re very focused on making sure we can deliver for you the tools that you need to make you feel present with the people you care about even during this period where we can’t be together in person,” Zuckerberg said.
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More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How a pharmacy delivery startup has capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic
—SBA website leaks personal data of 8,000 small-business loan applicants
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-24--Ramadan begins in a vastly changed world

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.
Happy Friday! The new Health and Human Services spox has a history of racist tweets, six senators are urgently calling for bias-mitigation training for the police, and actor John Cho fears for his safety and yours.
But first, your Ramadan-themed week in review, in Haiku.
It begins with a
sliver in the sky. A call
to contemplate and
fast, now a signal
to stay home, every room a
mosque. The time between
sunrise and sunset
has new Zoom rules for allies,
all sweet and helpful.
Don’t snack on camera.
Be mindful of prayer time. And
everyone can take
this time to reflect,
feel grateful! One quick iftar
tip: No bleach smoothies.
If you celebrate, may your Ramadan be as bright as ever. Wishing everyone a safe and contemplative weekend.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On point
The new HHS spokesperson under fire for now-deleted racist tweets Under fire? Really? Well, I suppose if the world were normal, he would be. Michael Caputo, a former 2016 Trump campaign operative, has been known for his fiery Twitter presence. Though he deleted most of his feed after being tapped for a job at Health and Human Services, they were easy to find. Here we find him pointlessly fighting with an anti-U.S. conspiracy theorist on March 12, by tweeting: "millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters." He said other stuff, too. When asked for comment by CNN, he said, “I don't care. It doesn't matter to me at all."
CNN
Six senators ask for greater anti-bias training for law enforcement during the pandemic An urgent letter sent to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week, asked for their immediate intervention in light of alarming incidents involving Black men being profiled or detained by police while wearing protective face masks. One incident involved a Miami-area doctor who was detained during a volunteer effort to test homeless people for coronavirus. Among the signatories were U.S. senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. “These alarming reports highlight the fact that racial biases—implicit or otherwise—don’t cease and in some ways are heightened during a national crisis,” Sen. Booker told Vox in an email.
Vox
The assimilation of Asian Americans was never coming Actor John Cho has written an insightful and poignant opinion piece sharing the violence and fear roiling the AAPI community, and the now constant intergenerational pleas to “stay safe.” It's a reversal of the strategy embraced by his immigrant parents. “Growing up, the assumption was that once we became American enough, there would be no need for such warnings—that we would be safe,” he says. Even very famous people, he reveals, are targets. “The pandemic is reminding us that our belonging is conditional.”
Los Angeles Times
Crossword puzzles are biased This is the concern expressed by more than 600 crossword puzzle enthusiasts, who co-signed an open letter sent to Eric von Coelln, the executive director of puzzles at the New York Times. In it, they make the case that the puzzles are created by white, cis-gendered men and cater only to that audience. “The systemic erasure of minority and female voices in crossword puzzles,” even “in puzzles written by women, people of color, and queer constructors,” is deeply problematic, they explain. It’s a very good letter and a snapshot of a very specific sub-culture. Vice provides fascinating context below.
Vice
Take a moment to review ServiceNow’s 2020 Diversity Report Reporting continues during this difficult time, and I’d argue that numbers matter now more than ever. I have a longer interview with Pat Wadors, ServiceNow’s Chief Talent Officer, to share next week, but do start here. While there is some interesting cultural fodder, I did get stuck on one fact: As of December 2019, the company reports they've achieved pay equity across gender and racial lines. There’s still work to do, but it’s a start.
ServiceNow
Coronavirus in the community
On background
Some descendants of victims of the 1923 Rosewood massacre received reparations. Did it help? The answer appears to be complicated. Rosewood, a thriving Black community in Northern Florida, was set upon and burned to the ground by an all-white mob in 1923. A 1994 law passed by the state’s legislature allowed descendants to go colleges in Florida tuition-free, the first such form of official reparations in the U.S. The scheme has been a blessing and a burden for some students. “We’re not doing this just for us,” says one recipient, at a low point in her six-year pharmacy doctoral program. “You always have to be the best and prove a point, simply because of who you are and what your family has gone through.” The Florida program is a test case for other reparations arrangements. “If I mess this up, I mess it up for me and my cousins and people I don’t even know,” she says.
Washington Post
Inclusion: Will you or won’t you? Erica Merritt, founder of Equius Consulting Group explains why the diversity and inclusion movement feels stalled in the U.S. For one, corporate systems often value assimilation, not inclusion. “Many of them are not willing to shift their culture, policies, or practices in order to make room for those people who look different, i.e. are of different racial backgrounds.” Lasting change requires organizations to “wrestle with the history, culture, ideology, and power dynamics that hold [their] social hierarch[ies] in place,” says Merritt. You can make all the business cases you want, she says. “Either organizations have the will to do this work or they don’t.”
Bold Culture Hub
Hey, how are you doing? It is a surprisingly powerful question, particularly if you ask it sincerely. Karyn Twaronite, EY’s Global Chair, Diversity and Inclusiveness, has data that suggests the question can trigger an important moment between colleagues. Pre-pandemic, their data found that more than 40% of people surveyed reported feeling physically and emotionally isolated in the workplace, across all generations, genders, and ethnicities. (It's got to be way higher now.) But about the same number reported that when people checked in on them, they felt more included. The check-in has to be personal—being cc'd on work emails, or invited to formal events (or Zooms) isn’t going to cut it. I share this advice from David Kyuman Kim often and it bears repeating now: It’s not the asking, it’s the listening. In times of crisis, “we have a responsibility to draw our attention to co-workers, to community members and ask a simple question—‘how are you doing?’” he says. “And then listen, really listen, as if you don’t already know the answer.”
HBR
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
The big number
$1.38 billion
That’s the economic impact of businesses run by people of color, according to Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director and senior counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending. They also employ more than 8.7 million Americans.
Today's mood board
The family business
Updates from members of the raceAhead community.


fortune--2020-04-24--Nintendo suffers major hack affecting 160,000 online accounts

Nintendo said Friday that personal information from about 160,000 online accounts may have been exposed in a major hack.
The company, which makes the Switch gaming console, said on a support page (published in Japanese) that hackers “obtained illegally” the personal IDs and passwords of the affected accounts. Additionally, it said the hackers had attempted to log in to an unspecific number of accounts by using the stolen information in early April.
The hack comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a surge in Nintendo Switch sales as people seek to entertain themselves while quarantined. Research firm NPD Group said earlier this week that Nintendo Switch sales in March had “more than doubled when compared to a year ago.”
As a result of the hack, the company is disabling the ability for people to log on to their online Nintendo accounts with their Nintendo Network ID. The company also said that it would reset the passwords for the accounts that hackers may have tried to access.
Some of the personal information that may have been exposed include people’s names, date of birth, country, gender, and email addresses. No credit card information was exposed, Nintendo said.
The company said it would notify impacted users by sending them emails telling them that their passwords had been reset. It urged those affected users to “please avoid reusing the password that you have already used for other services.”
“In the future, we will make further efforts to strengthen security and ensure safety so that similar events do not occur,” Nintendo said on a translated version of the support page.
Nintendo recommend that its customers set up two-step authentication for their Nintendo accounts as an added security measure.
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How a pharmacy delivery startup has capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic
—SBA website leaks personal data of 8,000 small-business loan applicants
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-24--Who is new AT&T CEO John Stankey?

Who is new AT&T CEO John Stankey?

AT&T has named longtime executive John Stankey as its next chief executive, following through on a succession plan the company outlined last year.
Stankey, 57, will take over on July 1 from Randall Stephenson, 60, who steered the telecom giant through 13 turbulent years. Now it will be up to the new CEO to wring a profit and reduce the debt from Stephenson’s big spending spree: the $67 billion 2015 purchase of DirecTV and the $109 billion paid for Time Warner in 2018.
While activist investors and some Wall Street analysts may have wanted AT&T’s board to break with Stephenson’s expensive expansion strategy, the Stankey selection marks an endorsement of the big acquisitions. The new CEO was Stephenson’s point man on integrating both purchases and regularly made the rounds in the press defending the deals.
“We bought Time Warner because we wanted to offer consumers not just great connectivity, but also something else. That’s our play,” Stankey explained to Barron’s earlier this year. “Our play is a great network, adding value with entertainment.”
The transition was rough on the ranks of Time Warner’s senior leadership. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes planned all along to retire after selling his company, but AT&T subsequently lost other key executives like HBO boss Richard Plepler, who’s making shows for Apple now, and Turner leaders David Levy and John Martin. AT&T also lost Warner Bros. studio head Kevin Tsujihara to a sex scandal last year.
Stankey has said that significant changes were needed at the old Time Warner to break down barriers and stimulate greater cooperation between its different units, such as HBO and Warner Bros. “The creative side of this business is still 100% intact,” he told CNBC in October.
Stankey’s rise to the top of one of America’s largest companies came from humble beginnings.
The youngest of three kids, he grew up in Los Angeles with his father, an insurance underwriter, and a stay-at-home mom. Working after school at a sporting goods store, Stankey was also an avid Boy Scout and attained the rank of Eagle Scout. He got an undergraduate degree in finance at Loyola Marymount University, graduating in 1985, and immediately went to work for phone carrier Pacific Bell. He added an MBA from the University of California at Los Angeles a few years later and kept on moving up the ranks even as the Baby Bells consolidated.
After running major parts of SBC Southwestern Bell, Stankey became chief information officer for the carrier when it merged with the original AT&T in 2005. In 2008, he moved up to chief technology officer and then chief strategy officer in 2012, becoming Stephenson’s top adviser on mergers and acquisitions.
Once he and Stephenson completed the DirecTV acquisition in 2015, Stankey was put in charge of the new unit, which was merged with AT&T’s smaller existing cable TV operations to form the company’s entertainment group. Under Stankey’s leadership, the satellite and cable TV business shed customers at a rate that alarmed Wall Street, shrinking from 26 million in July 2015 to under 23 million by the end of 2018 (and under 19 million at the end of the first quarter of 2020).
In 2018, when the Time Warner merger closed, he shifted to the role of CEO of that unit, which was renamed WarnerMedia. In addition to the loss of top executives, the media unit under Stankey also struggled to decide on a strategy for competing in the streaming video market against Netflix, Amazon, and others.
An early streaming service called DirecTV Now floundered after a price hike and was then renamed AT&T TV Now. That service was pushed aside at the end of last year with the launch of AT&T TV.
HBO’s streaming efforts, which more closely resemble Netflix, have largely continued as before the AT&T acquisition, but it soon plans to introduce a new service called HBO Max that will rely more on WarnerMedia’s library of popular, older TV shows. At $15 a month, it will cost slightly more than Netflix and double the price of Disney’s Disney+ service.
Still, Stankey predicts 50 million customers for the new HBO Max service within five years, attracting viewers with content from across all of the company’s divisions.
“Twice the content for the same price? I’ve had much more difficult marketing propositions to sell in the market than that,” he told CNBC last fall. “It’s an incredible value.”
More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:
—How a pharmacy delivery startup has capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic
—SBA website leaks personal data of 8,000 small-business loan applicants
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—What Seattle and San Francisco can teach us about mitigating the scourge of COVID-19
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-04-24--The Coronavirus Economy: The investor who launched a new podcast right before the outbreak

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Hitha Palepu describes herself as a “consummate multi-hyphenate,” juggling roles as an entrepreneur, investor, writer, and public speaker.
Chief among her professional roles is serving as CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, an early-stage life sciences company. And as partner in Adama Ventures, Palepu has invested in startups primarily founded by women, including luxury apparel maker M.M.LaFleur and the online community Girls’ Night In.
But some readers might be most familiar with Palepu from her popular weekly newsletter, and she has since expanded her brand with the launch of a podcast, which happened to debut just a few weeks before the shutdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Fortune spoke with Palepu for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, to ask about how the outbreak has affected her work and her thoughts on the future, and to get a sense of how she has been handling this news, both emotionally and financially.
Hitha Palepu is based in New York City. Molly Smith Photography
You have a popular newsletter, #5SmartReads, and just launched a brand-new podcast, 1 Smart Thing. What inspired you to launch each of these products? What do you want readers and listeners to take away from them?
I started #5SmartThings with a very selfish motive: so I could discuss the news I thought was important with other people. I launched it on Instagram Stories and got zero engagement at the very beginning. It was after weeks of posting that I saw people starting to swipe up and read the articles, and a month or two before people began replying and sharing the articles with their own communities. I launched the newsletter as a way to share all the week’s reads at once, and to share some of my other favorite things (items I’d been loving, books I’ve been reading, and little updates from my own life). The response and growth surpassed my initial expectations, which was to geek out over the news with other smart women.
I actually had the idea for the podcast first, before I started #5SmartReads. The original concept was different and far more ambitious, but some friends—Farnoosh Torabi and Molly Beck (the founder of Messy.fm, my portfolio company)—helped me refine the format and the positioning of 1 Smart Thing. I’m incredibly grateful for their wisdom and feedback, and the response to the show has been incredible.
My goal with both the newsletter and the podcast is to help people be smarter, faster. Our time is limited, and we have countless options on which media and content to consume. I’m not a journalist, but I am curious, and I try to share the stories and perspective that aren’t going viral on Twitter, scrolling on the chyrons of news channels, or on the front page of newspapers. My hope is that you feel more informed and that you’ve developed your own opinion after you read some of my smart reads or listen to an episode, and I welcome you to join the conversation.
You’re also an active angel investor. What are you looking for when deciding whether or not to invest in a new company? What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs when starting a company?
There are the typical things I look for: has the company established product-market fit; the growth rate to date; how they earn revenue; the reasons for the raise. I also have my own criteria for founders: how they solve problems; what the early challenges of the company were and how they overcame them; and how they take care of themselves and their team. Cash flow management and path to profitability is really important to me. A question I often ask is, “If this was the last round you ever raise, how would you manage it?”
I want to invest in founders and companies that have a long-term vision beyond a big exit or going public. I want to know what the impact of the business will be on people, both now and in the future. The most satisfying answers aren’t necessarily what the founder says, but how they make me feel when they respond. It’s a little woo, but I trust my gut and the numbers equally, and I won’t invest unless I’m comfortable with both.
What else would you normally be working on this time of year if there weren’t a pandemic going on?
I would have likely closed the fundraising round for the company I run with my father and [would] be executing on our commercial strategy plan. I’d be huddling with my portfolio companies on profitability and growth plans. I also would have just wrapped a few big speaking engagements (South by Southwest, JPMA’s Best in Baby show) and would be preparing for some upcoming ones.
And if I’m being honest, I’d probably be sleep deprived, eating terribly, and not spending enough time with my kids.
When did you realize that COVID-19 would affect your work?
It didn’t hit me until South by Southwest was officially canceled. Shortly after, I met with my team to review our cash on hand and reduce burn as much as possible and volunteered to forgo my salary to maximize cash flow. We also revamped our fundraising strategy, which I spend the most of my work time executing on.
I had to alert some founders that I was in active discussions with that we wouldn’t be investing in the near term, but that I would be happy to come on as an adviser. I also kept a running list of asks from my portfolio company in its own Evernote document and tried to coordinate an introduction or mention one of their current promotions whenever I could.
My news consumption and the articles I curated for #5SmartReads definitely changed. COVID information is overflowing, but I was hunting for one-off stories that focused on showing the impact of the pandemic in the populations we’re not hearing about. I spent more time than I expected to find non-COVID stories to share, to help balance out the day’s selections. I knew the podcast would be more sporadic than I had hoped for, given that my time would be focused on my company and the kids right now. We are starting to find our rhythm with homeschooling and changing nap schedules and my getting used to working for a long stretch after the boys are in bed, so I’m hoping to get into a new recording rhythm soon.
Has whatever this new normal is affected your work for the podcast? How has it affected your investment porfolio?
Absolutely. The podcast is on hold as I focus fully on closing our round. On the investing side of things, I’ve been doing more brainstorming calls with my founders as they pivot during this period. For some, sales have been booming, and we talk through customer retention and community building. For others, I help advise on continuously updating the budgets and making any helpful introductions. All of my founders have demonstrated such strong leadership and sound judgment during this time, and I’m really proud of all of them.
Palepu also runs a blog, Hitha On the Go, which is committed to helping women live their best lives. Molly Smith Photography
What are your plans for the short term and long term?
My short-term plans are to keep everything going—my own company, my content, and my portfolio—and emerge from this COVID period more focused and with solid plans in place. And to survive homeschooling my older son!
My long-term plans are more ambitious. My goal with our life sciences company is ultimately to exit or out-license our lead product at the time of commercialization, and I’m confident that we’ll make it a reality. On the investing side, I would love to launch my own VC fund and help more founders and companies grow and scale. Much of the content I’ve been creating—the newsletter and podcast, IGTV and Lives, and speaking engagements—has basically been my personal audition to be a host on The View.
Long term, I see myself at that table, sharing my thoughts on hot topics, the political view, and posing tough questions to our leaders.
On a personal note, how have you been faring amid all this?
I have good days and hard days. At the end of the day, I’m with my family, and we’re safe and healthy and have everything we need, and that’s far more than most can say right now.
But I’d be lying if I said I was fine all the time. I randomly burst into tears or find myself raising my voice or find it hard to communicate exactly how I’m feeling.
But I’ve slowly found a new rhythm to our days and am trying to savor this time with both my young sons and my parents. I’m finally able to get into new novels and establish my reading routine again, and I’m carving out a little bit of time every day to work on all the needlepoint projects I’ve collected over the past few months.
And I have to ask, given your new show, if there was one smart thing you could impart to readers about getting through this economic crisis, what would it be?
There is so much that we don’t know, and we’re still in the middle of it all. The advice that’s helped me is to focus on the day, redefining expectations on what makes a successful day, and to savor some of these slow moments if you’re privileged enough to be safe, healthy, and secure during this pandemic. (Because many are not.)
My friend shared a practice that has helped me reset the day when it inevitably gets derailed. I hide in the bathroom for a couple of minutes to take a few deep breaths and visualize how I want the rest of the day to go. It rarely goes according to plan, but it does help me be more centered and calm when the kids are crawling all over me, my inbox is rapidly filling up, and everyone is hungry and tired and grumpy. And when all else fails, a dance party helps reset the day.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—This famed economist doesn’t think we’re headed for another Great Recession
—South Korea has the most comprehensive coronavirus data. What it’s taught us so far
—10 questions about the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic, answered
—6 steps to sustainably flatten the coronavirus curve
—How hackers are exploiting the coronavirus—and how to protect yourself
—Hong Kong launches a surveillance operation to track suspected coronavirus patients
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The race is on to create a coronavirus antiviral drug and vaccine
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-04-24--Neiman Marcus may file for bankruptcy, but either way, it needs to get slimmer

It looks like selling plenty of Alexander McQueen dresses for $13,500 and Kiton men’s biker jackets for $10,795 won’t be enough to spare Neiman Marcus from seeking bankruptcy protection.
The iconic 113-year-old retailer—which has struggled for years and is now pushed to the edge by the pandemic forcing its stores to close indefinitely—is reportedly close to filing for Chapter 11 protection on Sunday, with emergency financing of $600 million lined up, in hopes of restructuring itself as a healthier, and, probably, leaner business. A Neiman Marcus spokesperson declined to comment.
Neiman Marcus, founded in downtown Dallas in 1907 and for decades the de rigueur fashion destination for society ladies and debutantes alike, is renowned for its hyper-elegant emporia—with designer clothes presented in sumptuous settings with art by Roy Lichtenstein and Matisse—and its top restaurants.
Yet, despite its cachet, the chain has struggled to keep up in the luxury wars. And its enormous debt load of $4.9 billion—a slightly bigger figure than annual sales and the result of two leveraged buyouts since 2006—has handcuffed the company.
“The ladies who lunch are what the typical shopper may have been. That’s not the lifestyle people live anymore,” says Marie Driscoll, managing director for Coresight Research’s luxury and fashion practice.
Younger consumers aren’t as wedded to a single retailer or brand anymore, and today’s luxury shoppers are happy to match a designer dress with vintage shoes from a thrift shop and a handbag they got at T.J. Maxx. A former Neiman CEO complained a few years ago that Neiman’s shoppers had become less loyal and visited stores less frequently.
That isn’t to say Neiman doesn’t benefit from a loyal clientele: Its most regular customers spend an average of $16,617 a year there, the company told Fortune last year. About 31% of Neiman customers are in a household with a net worth above $1 million.
But it needs a new generation of shoppers.
Neiman stopped publicly disclosing its financials last summer once the number of its creditors fell below a threshold set by U.S. regulators. But its sales had slipped from its $5 billion apex in 2015.
To sustain a nationwide fleet of now 43 stores, making it the largest luxe department business, ahead of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, Neiman has cast a wider net than in its heyday. And that, to some degree, has been its core problem: denting its luxury cred.
As much as Neiman Marcus can embody the ne plus ultra in luxury retail, it sells a lot of the same merchandise as does Macy’s Inc’s Bloomingdale’s chain, Nordstrom, and Saks—brands like A.G. jeans, Theory, Canada Goose, Ted Baker, and so on.
That is the same “sea of sameness” that has hurt department stores Macy’s, J.C. Penney, and Kohl’s, but at the luxury level. It’s what ultimately felled Barneys, which went bankrupt last summer and liquidated in February.
“You’re just going into the lion’s den of ‘accessible’ luxury where there’s plenty of competition,” says Steve Dennis, a former Neiman Marcus executive and head of SageBerry Consulting.
What’s more, Neiman did its high-end aura no favors last decade by expanding a fleet of Last Call discount stores. The company said in March it would start closing all but three of them to shore up its luxury image. Saks has made the same mistake with its massive Off 5th outlet chain.
Yet, even at the very high end, Neiman is facing much more intense competition than a decade ago, not just from Saks, but from its own vendors. The luxury brands themselves—such as Chanel, Brioni, Dior, and Salvatore Ferragamo—have opened up many more of their own stores in the past decade and have vastly stronger websites than they used to.
And then there is Farfetch and Net-a-Porter, which have poached a lot of business. To be fair, on the e-commerce front, Neiman is no slouch. Some 36% of its revenue is digital, more than what Nordstrom or Saks get.
But all this makes the following question even more pressing: What is a 100,000-square-foot Neiman Marcus store even for anymore?
Leaner and meaner
Observers believe that a leaner, more focused Neiman will be a more viable Neiman: Ubiquity is the antithesis of luxury, after all.
With fewer stores, Neiman would be able to make the remaining ones more dazzling and distinctive. Observers point to Bergdorf Goodman, owned by Neiman Marcus Group, and Harrods in London as models: one-of-a-kind stores that are true destinations.
Neiman stores are indisputably elegant and lovely. But Driscoll likens them to beautiful European cathedrals: majestic and beautiful, homages to a bygone era.
The point of a store is no longer about browsing, hoping for a nice surprise. Young shoppers browse on Pinterest and Instagram to get ideas.
“The glamour of stores is not necessary anymore,” Driscoll says. “You have to create theater and event.” That means things like more in-store events with designers or private mini fashion shows.
Whatever form that takes will be easier to do with fewer stores. Neiman is already espousing that ethos in many ways: Its year-old store at New York’s Hudson Yards mall, now closed until further notice, hosts a big cooking demonstration area that has proved wildly popular with visitors.
The Neiman Marcus at Hudson Yards in New York hosted a Fashion Week CBD panel in 2019. Eugene Gologursky—Getty Images for Neiman Marcus
Given the shift by shoppers away from luxury department stores in recent years, many see the landscape ripe for consolidation. And given how badly luxury shopping is likely to be hurt by the pandemic, the case is stronger.
There is, once again, market speculation that Saks’s parent company, Hudson’s Bay Co., will take a stab at buying Neiman, this time in bankruptcy court, and merge operations, while keeping the chains separate. HBC has reportedly tried three times in the past decade.
The idea would be to have more clout with brands and cut stores in markets where they have locations near each other. (Fortune in December predicted HBC would buy Neiman and shut a third of each chain’s stores.) HBC declined to comment.
Whether or not that happens, and whether Neiman seeks bankruptcy protection, the company will most likely have to become a slimmer retailer to keep its spot in wealthy shoppers’ affections and carve out a more distinctive niche for itself—all the more given luxury sales are already cratering, as evidenced by quarterly results from LVMH and other conglomerates.
“There is too much capacity chasing too few dollars,” says Dennis.
More must-read retail coverage from Fortune:
—Retailers that are smartest about shopping tech will finish on top after the pandemic recedes
—Target’s April e-commerce has nearly quadrupled as crowd controls slam in-store sales
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy season during coronavirus-era uncertainty
—The comfort economy gains momentum during the coronavirus pandemic
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The greatest designs of modern times
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-24--What to stream (and skip) on HBO and Apple TV+ this weekend

Stay home. As COVID-19 spreads, that’s the advice stressed by epidemiologists racing to combat the virus, who have implored Americans to avoid all nonessential travel and limit all person-to-person interactions. “Social distancing,” it seems, is our new normal—at least for now.
Though it can be challenging to look for silver linings in times as tumultuous as these, those sheltering indoors can at least rest assured that there’s now little reason to put off catching up on Netflix. And particularly with movie theaters shuttering across the country in response to the growing pandemic, Americans are looking to VOD and streaming platforms in search of their next binge-watch.
Fortune’s (still) here, for one last week, to help you navigate the latest offerings, boiling down all the entertainment out there to a few distinct recommendations: Put more simply, should you rent it, stream it, or skip it? Find out below.
SEE IT: ‘Bad Education’ (HBO)
Before an embezzlement scandal brought him crashing down, district superintendent Frank Tassone was a hero to students, faculty, and especially parents in the well-to-do New York suburb of Roslyn on Long Island.
Smooth-talking, slickly efficient, and exceedingly thoughtful, he was the model educator; under Tassone’s management, academic test scores shot through the roof, and record numbers of Roslyn students were making their way to Ivy League schools. More than that, Tassone knew the kids by name, remembered what they were interested in—and he was dexterous when it comes to assuaging the concerns of their affluent, overbearing parents. That Tassone was also a crook, lifting millions from the district’s coffers over a span of years, is the lit fuse at the center of this wily dynamite stick of a second feature from writer-director Cory Finley, whose similarly class-obsessed Thoroughbreds was one of the most impressive debuts of 2018.
Played by Hugh Jackman as a sinner clinging to illusions of sainthood, Tassone cuts a striking figure across Bad Education, a dark glimmer in his eye and a certain rigidity to his pressed suits and slicked-back hair. He appears to genuinely care for students at Roslyn; indeed, when aspiring journalist Rachel (Blockers‘ Geraldine Viswanathan) starts digging into the school’s financial records, only to uncover irregularities, Tassone’s the one to encourage her to treat it as more than a puff piece. There’s a sly genius to casting Hugh Jackman in this kind of role; he’s an actor who always carries the promise of a genial grin and a warm handshake, and these traits are gradually weaponized across Bad Education. It gradually becomes clear that Tassone has been living a double life, financing flights to Vegas and carrying on a doomed affair with a former pupil (Blindspotting‘s Rafael Casal), all on the district’s dime. Deplorable though his behavior might be, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for someone this clearly lost beneath the masks he’d come to wear.
Ditto for Allison Janney as Pam Gluckin, Tassone’s second-in-command whose head ends up on the chopping block first when the school catches wind she’s been skimming off the top. There’s a quiet rage and deeper assymetry to Pam, which Janney teases out through a series of thin smiles and withering glares, each somehow more perfectly implemented than the last.
What Bad Education does especially well is chart the moral ambiguities at the center of its story, the moments of doubt and reappraisal so often left out of true-crime tales that declare clear-cut villains. Jackman and Janney make for a devilishly compelling duo, their performances perfectly calibrated to first court our sympathies then alienate them. The plight of educators across the country, underfunded and undervalued (especially in wealthy enclaves like Roslyn), is legitimate, and it’s a tribute to these actors how quickly we can see the gears turning, the rationalizations forming, as they question how to spin their way out of prison. At times, you almost believe them. Neither Tassone nor Gluckin are bad people, or so they’d quickly tell you; the high-wire thrill of their performances is in watching it slowly dawn on these two that they might not be such good ones either.
STREAM IT: Beastie Boys Story (Apple TV+)
An unexpectedly galvanizing time-capsule experience of a film, Beastie Boys Story opens with archival footage of the band’s three members, shockingly young, as they lounge on a couch, cheerily introducing themselves across the first verse of “Paul Revere” (“Now here’s a little story I’ve got to tell / About three bad brothers you know so well”).
But then, with giddy verve, the cresting guitar riffs of “Sabotage” crash in, and this film turns out to be something a little spunkier than your average trip down memory lane. After a dizzying sizzle reel of concert footage, intercut with sound-bites from various fans stressing the vitality of their favorite band, Beastie Boys Story heads to the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, where director Spike Jonze (reuniting with the band after directing a number of their music videos) is preparing to film Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond during a live-theater talk, a memoir of their last 30 years that’s being shaped, revised, and reshaped in real time.
Notably absent is the third Beastie, Adam Yauch, who died from cancer in 2012 and whose memory hangs—sometimes heavy, sometimes warmly hilarious—over the evening. As Horovitz and Diamond pace the stage, occasionally glancing at teleprompters as they power through a free-wheeling yet thoughtfully thorough discussion of their careers, graphics and montages pop on the projector screen behind them. Unlike during the live performance, Jonze has the ability to plunge the documentary fully into those asides, lending it an engrossing multimedia quality.
But Jonze’s approach is more endearingly off-the-wall than all-out revolutionary—and the same was always true of the Beastie Boys, so it fits par excellence. Horovitz and Diamond regale all in attendance with tales reaching from their early years, as rambunctious friends who started out as ’80s punks before stumbling into rap, all the way up through the turn of the century and subsequent loss of Yauch; and it might not work, were the stories not so hilarious, strange, and oddly moving. How three gawky white guys, making it all up as they went, came to open for Madonna and ascend to the upper echelons of the music industry—as you might expect, it’s kind of a long story, and Beastie Boys Story is affectionate enough a document of history to let it play out across almost two hours. But that’s time well spent, especially in moments when Horovitz and Diamond reflect on periods they’re less proud of, such as when they fired the group’s female drummer for (more or less) not jibing with the boy’s-club image they’d wanted to cultivate. The film’s often more solemn and pensive than one might expect from a band as chaotic and charged-up as the Beastie Boys. But it’s touching to watch these guardians of a very certain ’80s inanity reflect at length, on all they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how extraordinarily far they’ve really come.
SKIP IT: Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Showtime)
Fans of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, be advised—this “spiritual descendant” to John Logan’s delectably camp Gothic horror has surprisingly little in common with its gone-too-soon namesake. Though City of Angels carries over the showrunner—as well as actor Rory Kinnear, playing a different character—most everything else in the series is new and unfamiliar, including a seismic shift in setting from 1890s London to 1938 Los Angeles.
Accordingly, City of Angels tells a very different story from its predecessor, trading out Victorian intrigue for something more akin to L.A. noir, even as it maintains supernatural elements and a very Logan-esque, literary flair. Broadly speaking, it’s still operating in the arena of urban fantasy, though City of Angels‘ new backdrop filters that genre through fresh perspectives and scenarios. The original series exalted in using characters from Gothic literature to reflect ideas of monstrosity that existed in Victorian culture, typically related to sexuality. From Kinnear’s theater-freak Caliban, creation of the callow Dr. Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), to the sharp-shooting Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), his lycanthropy fiercely repressed, Penny Dreadful‘s cast of characters were all queer outcasts nursing forbidden desires.
In City of Angels, racial tensions are comparatively more centered than sexual politics, with the planned construction of L.A.’s major freeways driving the city’s Chicano population into conflict with elected officials and heavy-handed police officers. For protagonist Santiagio “Tiago” Vega (Daniel Zovatto), the city’s first Chicano detective, the gathering storm feels particularly combustible, and his loyalties are quickly split between his seen-it-all partner on the force (Nathan Lane) and his understandably outraged brothers, Mateo (Johnathan Nieves) and Raul (Adam Rodriguez). Not helping matters, a wealthy Beverly Hills family has been ritualistically murdered across town, stirring suspicions that practitioners of black magic may be planning something nefarious. And what good could possibly come of German doctor Peter Craft (Kinnear) openly espousing Nazism on the steps of City Hall, even as other Nazi agents work more discreetly to access levers of political power inside?
None whatsoever, if Magda has something to say about it. City of Angels is less supernaturally tinged than its predecessor, and its one headlong dive into the Demimonde (at least in the six episodes sent out for review) is the inclusion of this shape-shifting demon, played with a serpentine charm by Natalie Dormer. Out to prove to fellow deity Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo) that humanity is inherently evil, Magda doesn’t exactly stay on the sidelines. Bent on chaos, she slips into the roles of women connected to the series’ various plot threads, speaking dark thoughts into men’s ears and inciting them to violence. As the mousy assistant to a blubbering city councilman (Michael Gladis), she calculates how to best ensure plans for the Arroyo-Seco highway will obliterate the Chicano neighborhood of Belvedere Heights; slipping into another skin, there she is as Rio, dancing the night away at the underground Crimson Cat, a coquettish Italian firebrand who commands a Pachuco gang.
It’s interesting that one of the most immediate, nagging issues with City of Angels is Magda herself. As entertaining as it is to see Dormer cycle between accents and wardrobes (leading L.A. on, it must be said, a rather circuitous route to chaos for an entity who’s capable of inducing it with a well-placed whisper), the character feels half-formed and ancillary, an awkward tie to the supernatural within a series that’s otherwise more interested in depicting real-world history. The problems with Magda speak to the larger weaknesses of City of Angels; this is an extraordinarily busy series, with no fewer than six driving plot threads and a dozen characters, and the strain of sustaining them shows almost immediately. More than half a season in, so much time has been afforded to setting up individual chess pieces that the endgame’s already arrived and one’s barely had a chance to glance at the board.
Logan’s never been shy about wearing myriad influences on his sleeves at once, and City of Angels does steal from the best. There’s a doomed, West Side Story-style romance brewing between Tiago and radio evangelist Sister Molly (Kerry Bishé), and a Guys and Dolls flourish to some of the more fantastical dance sequences. L.A. Confidential and Chinatown hang heavy over the series’ nostalgic, jazzy treatment of police work, and Logan’s central idea—that the construction of motorways across L.A. acted, in a multiplicity of ways, like a form of social engineering—feels of a piece with those classic tales of hard-boiled gumshoes grinding against the gears of bureaucratic “progress.” All the ingredients are there in City of Angels, but the series in its current state is too crowded to let you savor any of their flavors.
The best of the rest:
Beanpole, one of the very best films screened at the New York Film Festival last year, is now screening virtually at arthouse cinemas across the country. Directed by the prodigious Russian talent Kantemir Balagov, it looks at the existential toll of war on those left alive in Leningrad by 1945, focusing on the unlikely relationship between traumatized nurse Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), whose child is in Iya’s care. Devastating but deeply human, it’s the rare film about war that looks squarely at the scale of its hopelessness and still comes away glimmering with hope.
One of the few summer blockbusters not delayed by the coronavirus, Netflix’s Extraction reunites Chris Hemsworth with his Avengers stunt coordinator, Sam Hargrave, making his directorial debut on this stock-and-barrel action-thriller. With their credentials, it’s little surprise that the on-screen spectacle is a cut above what we’ve come to expect from Netflix. This story—of a black-market mercenary (Hemsworth) tasked with retrieving a crime lord’s kidnapped son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) from Bangladesh—accrues dramatic layers as its central mission precipitates a crisis of purpose for its lethal protagonist.
Also on VOD, True History of the Kelly Gang (whose title is meant ironically) paints a fire-and-brimstone portrait of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, using Peter Carey’s hyper-vivid novel as inspiration. In the hands of director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth), the colonial outback has perhaps never felt this alien or remote on screen, all scorched landscapes and dead trees white and brittle as bone. But it’s a fitting backdrop for this story, set at that far-back point in time where history curls into legend, about a Ned Kelly—played, fearsomely, by George MacKay—locked into the larger-than-life figure he’d become by virtue of an upbringing that gave him little choice in the matter.
Finally, Robert the Bruce (on VOD) acts as something of an unofficial Braveheart sequel, with Angus Macfadyen reprising the same role he played there and picking up with the Scottish outlaw several long years into his war against the English and assorted Scottish clans. The same character was played recently by Chris Pine in David Mackenzie’s mud-caked Outlaw King, and Robert the Bruce makes for a curious comparison piece to both that film and Braveheart, giving Macfadyen (who also co-wrote the script) the opportunity to revisit his best-known character and grant him a worthy swan song. While there’s nothing here to visually rival the character’s past cinematic outings, its exploration of the quiet realities lurking beneath outsized myths makes this a more melancholic, surprisingly thoughtful diversion. Watch, also, for Anna Hutchison (of The Cabin in the Woods, and Starz’s third Spartacus series), effective and moving as the impoverished widow who shelters Robert, and a cameo from Jared Harris, one of the best there is at chewing the castle scenery.
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More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Ricky Gervais on releasing After Life season two in a global pandemic
—Hollywood artists are creating PPE for the medical community
—China’s movie theaters are closed again, causing anxiety for studios
—How Mrs. America designers revived a ’70s feminist showdown
—How movie theaters can make a comeback after the coronavirus pandemic has receded
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-04-24--5 ways to find unadvertised job openings

After the longest economic expansion in history and its tight labor market preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the past few weeks. Estimates put real unemployment at roughly 18%, heating up competition for openings.
And, yes, there are still openings. LinkedIn has added a special section where it highlights companies announcing large hiring initiatives. Fidelity Investments, Salesforce, Capital One, and even SpaceX have also announced that they’re hiring. And in addition to front-line essential workers, such as store associates, healthcare specialists, and warehouse employees, companies in these sectors are also continuing to hire in other departments, says Kiran Prasad, VP of consumer products at LinkedIn.
However, there are opportunities that never get published in a job ad or large platform. Cincinnati-based career coach Kristen Zavo, author of Job Joy: Your Guide to Success, Meaning, and Happiness in Your Career, says that many, if not most, jobs are never advertised. They may be placed with recruiters or hiring managers who use their own networks to fill the role. “I’ve seen that in my own personal experience, and clients and HR directors have confirmed that that is true,” she says.
So, how do you find jobs when they’re filled before you have a chance to apply or never even announced in the first place? Zavo and other experts recommend a combination of networking, resourcefulness, and strategy to find opportunity now.
1. Analyze your skills
Assessing what truly makes you stand apart in a particular field can help you gain a valuable edge in a competitive job market. So, before you begin sending out scattershot resumes, take a moment to analyze where you can be exceptional, says Jason M. Hill, founder of Sound Advice Careers, an outplacement and career coaching firm. “Really understanding what it is you want to do in the intersection of your zone of genius—the intersection of what you’re awesome at and what you love to do,” he says.
It’s easy to fall into a scarcity mindset, but if you can clearly assess the types of jobs where you can deliver real value and express that, you’re going to have an edge over applicants who are looking for anything they can land, Hill says.
2. Polish your online brand
As you ramp up your job search, take some time to look at how you appear online, including sprucing up your LinkedIn profile. Prasad says applicants should be aware of features in that platform that can help recruiters know they’re looking for a new job. This helps you tap into the network of jobs that are managed by professional talent-finders.
It’s also a good time to begin publishing more online to showcase your knowledge, abilities, and thought leadership, sharing others’ content, and participating in conversations online with contacts. LinkedIn has seen a 55% year-over-year increase in online conversations.
3. Tap your network
Once your online presence reflects your strengths and you have an idea of where you bring value, start reaching out to your network strategically, Hill recommends. Connect online with contacts in your work discipline. Look for mutual connections who can introduce you to contacts at the companies you’re targeting. Create an introductory message with links to your relevant online profiles, website, or portfolio to make it easy for contacts to forward your information and make introductions.
Zavo recommends scheduling brief informational interviews. Contacts may have more time if they’re working from home, so ask for 15 minutes to discuss the company or your job search. As you prep for the call or video chat, be sure that you do your homework, gather information and refine your career story.
At the end of the call, ask the contact if they can think of anyone else with whom you should speak, Zavo suggests. That may lead to other introductions and opportunities to expand your network.
4. Look for clues
Hill suggests targeting opportunities and contacts in industries like logistics, health care, technology, and others where growth is still happening. Examine the investor relations and news release sections of the companies you’re targeting to see if they have announcements about growth initiatives or cutbacks, which may help you know where to target your efforts most effectively.
Beyond formal job ads, you can find other clues online about companies that are hiring. Sometimes, employees will create social media posts about opportunities. Search for terms like “hiring” and “opportunity” on social media, and refine the results to include only “posts” or “content.”
5. Strengthen your skill set
Use your free time to build new skills that will make you a more attractive candidate. Prasad says that LinkedIn has seen a 50% week-over-week increase in learning content streaming on the platform. The company has also made about 30 courses on subjects like remote work, navigating new work environments, and networking available for free.
Finding opportunities before they’re public—or which may never be made public—requires some sleuthing, strategy, and effective networking. Starting now will help you get an edge on your job search and more likely to find the right opportunity for you.
More must-read careers coverage from Fortune:
—How to write a professional bio
—How Fortune 500 companies are stepping up during the pandemic
—3 ways to put your best foot forward on a video job interview
—Everything you need to know about furloughs—and what they mean for workers
—An internship during the coronavirus pandemic is a crash course in adaptability
—WATCH: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
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fortune--2020-04-24--The pandemic will curb office space, one tech investor says

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Egon Durban, the co-CEO of tech-focused private-equity firm Silver Lake, has made memorable appearances at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen over the years. I interviewed him on Thursday over Zoom for a Brainstorm Tech virtual audience. He talked about playing the long game, which makes sense. He has no choice but to do so for ailing entertainment and live-events investments such as AMC movie theaters and the Endeavor talent empire. He also has the long game in mind for two massive travel investments for which his firm got in at Buffett-like markdowns: Airbnb and Expedia.
Some key takeaways: (Huge thanks to Lucinda Shen, who generously shared her notes with me, since I was busy. See Term Sheet’s take on the talk.)
The 40-some companies in Silver Lake’s portfolio have debt equal to about 2.4 times their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, a low figure for private-equity-owned businesses. Those companies bought 70 companies last year.
Durban professes no special read on when travel will come back beyond that it will come back. Ditto entertainment. It’s good to be an investor who sits above all the rest, particularly lowly common shareholders.
Durban himself isn’t a big “butt-to-seat person”—people who work with me know I can relate—so he isn’t overly bullish on a recovery in commercial real estate. Like other people I’ve spoken to recently who are blessed with good health and better jobs, he’s busier than ever.
The investor started tweeting shortly after Silver Lake invested in Twitter—and then stopped a few weeks ago. (Tweeting and big-dollar-value investments don’t necessarily go hand in hand.)
A metrics-driven guy, Durban ended our chat with a great one: He has had dinner with his family for 43 consecutive nights, surely a record.
***
Speaking of companies that have been hammered by the slowdown in entertainment, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, whose company owns WarnerMedia, had a great line in an earnings call, as reported in The Wall Street Journal: “We bring in the smartest and the most genius economists in the world, and you can bring a dozen of them in, and the range of possible outcomes just for the second quarter of 2020 is unbelievably wide.”
True that.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding. Grocery-delivery service Instacart plans to hire another 250,000 workers to help meet soaring demand. It added 300,000 people last month. At the other end of the spectrum, Google is freezing hiring in its marketing department as it plans to slash that unit's budget by 50%.
In all of the directions it can whizz. The long slog for Apple to transition its computers off of Intel chips could finally reach consumers in 2021, Bloomberg reports. The new in-house chips are faster versions of the processors used in iPhones and are codenamed Kalamata.
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know. True to his word, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan's team is rolling out an update to the popular video conferencing software that focuses on improving security features. The 5.0 update, coming soon to a computer near you, includes enabling passwords by default and giving even basic and free education accounts access to the waiting-room feature to keep would-be Zoombombers out of chats. Zoom is up to 300 million daily users now, Yuan says, from 10 million a day before the pandemic.
That's the fastest speed there is. The latest D.C. problem for Amazon comes from the House Judiciary Committee. After the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was using data from third-party sellers to guide its decisions about making private-label products, committee chair Jerrold Nadler says the tech company may have misled Congress. But how about Facebook? The social network on Thursday removed the interest category "pseudoscience" that advertisers could target after it came to light last week. Maybe Congress could look into that one?
When you're feeling very small and insecure. Better news in D.C. came from the Federal Communications Commission, which adopted a final rule freeing the entire 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi. That about quadruples the bandwidth available for all of us to use, and new compatible gear could hit the market by the end of the year. Bottom line: Don't buy a new Wi-Fi router right now. In other cool communications news, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says his Starlink broadband-from-space service will be ready for public beta testing in about six months. Where do I sign up?
How amazingly unlikely is your birth. On Wall Street, Intel beat first-quarter expectations, but after a strong stock run and growing concerns about the rest of the year, still saw its stock price sag. Sales jumped 23% to almost $20 billion, led by massive growth in its datacenter business, but the company also withdrew its financial guidance for the year due to the coronavirus. Intel's stock, up 29% over the past month, dropped 5% in pre-market trading on Friday. Verizon's revenue fell 2% to almost $32 billion. Its shares, up 11% over the past month, were about unchanged in pre-market trading.
(Headline reference explainer video, courtesy of the great Monty Python's Flying Circus.)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
It's been on the drawing board since 1988, but the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, known as ITER, is finally just a few years away from actually starting up. The 25,000-ton machine will be used to mimic the fusion reaction inside stars and eventually create pollution-free energy. Laura Mallonee reports for Wired on how it will work.
To get the atoms whipping around the inner chamber of the Russian-nesting-doll-like machine, a magnet will drive 15 million amperes of electricity through them. They'll also be zapped by 24 microwave generators and three semitruck-sized particle guns, until they reach 270 million degrees F and, avec optimisme, crash into each other, releasing heaps of energy. There's no guarantee ITER will achieve fusion by 2035, as scheduled. But Edward Morse, who teaches nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, says it's the “only viable” hope we have to secure the energy we'll need over the next millennia: “It's Rosemary's baby. We have to pray for Rosemary's baby.” And if it fails? As Eddington wrote, if man “is not yet destined to reach the sun and solve for all time the riddle of its constitution, yet he may hope to learn from his journey some hints to build a better machine.”
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few long reads that I came across this week:
To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I Had to Outrun My Past (Wired)
After 20 years of long-distance competition, I ran my fastest. All it took was tech, training, and a new understanding of my life.
The Computer Scientist Who Can’t Stop Telling Stories (Quanta)
For pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression.
MIT Professor Neri Oxman Is as Otherworldly as Her Creations (Interview)
To spend an afternoon with Neri Oxman is to find yourself on a sort of acid trip.
Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity (New Yorker)
For years, the elusive singer-songwriter has been working, at home, on an album with a strikingly raw and percussive sound. But is she prepared to release it into the world?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Former Cisco CEO John Chambers finally gets his wish: Video conferencing is now mainstream By Michal Lev-Ram
Apple Music is now available on Samsung Smart TVs. Here’s how to get it By Jonathan Vanian
Bill Gates explains how to beat the coronavirus pandemic By Clifton Leaf
4 ways to prepare your career to recover from coronavirus By Anne Fisher
Why Universal beat Warner Bros. for the Lego movie franchise** By Aric Jenkins
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
My wife and I are not super-fans of Amy Poehler's sitcom Parks and Recreation, but we're outnumbered by those in our house under the age of 22 who absolutely love it. So I'm sure we'll all be tuning in to NBC on April 30 at 8:30 p.m. when Poehler gets the gang back together for a special new episode dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, try to remember what's important in life: friends, work, and waffles.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-04-24--Why Silver Lake is investing in travel during a global lockdown

This is the web version of Term Sheet, Fortune’s newsletter about deals and dealmakers. Sign up here.
How are investors now betting on travel, given the uncertainty over when the lockdown ends?
Since the pandemic hit stateside, Silver Lake and Sixth Street have shown up as equity and debt investors in coronavirus-hit Airbnb. Travel booking company Expedia yesterday raised $3.2 billion—including some $1.2 billion in equity from Apollo and Silver Lake.
The logic behind these bets, at least for Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban: Cash is king. He told Fortune that he is betting that in the long term, the nation will go back to normal and that “capitalism is not going to fail.” To manage the uncertainty of how long the coronavirus may keep the world in some kind of lockdown, Durban is betting on companies downtrodden by the coronavirus, but are cash-rich.
“In both the cases of [Expedia and Airbnb], we believe these companies are well-funded through whatever version of whatever restart and whatever healthcare solution is necessary,” said Durban in a virtual Fortune Brainstorm Tech conversation Thursday. “Though there may be a delay in realization of the internal rate of return.”
The coronavirus has depressed valuations across the board and given investors an opportunity to find more lucrative deals than before. The $1 billion debt-and-equity Airbnb deal in which Silver Lake invested came reportedly with an interest rate of over 10%.
But it’s still a bet that the economy will come back before the cash runs dry for the companies—a downright terrifying thing to try to predict given how little we know about the virus, and its apparent proclivity to re-emerge when everything seems under control.
“We’re planning for a second wave outbreak, for equity markets to go down 20%, credit markets to tighten and get scary, banks to re-price their capital,” Durban said. “We’re planning for the worst across all of our portfolio.”
PPP part two: On Thursday, the House passed an additional $310 billion in Paycheck Protection Program funding after the first round dried up in two weeks.
The U.S. Treasury said publicly traded firms will now have a hard time proving that they need the funds—good news (kind of) for small businesses. The deal also sets aside a minimum of $30 billion for financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, and another $30 billion to those with assets of between $10 to $50 billion.
VENTURE DEALS
- AvidXchange, A Charlotte, N.C.-based provider of payment automation solutions, raised an additional $128 million in funding, bringing the round total to $388 million. Investors include Lone Pine Capital, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Pivot Investment Partners, Mastercard, Sixth Street Partners and Neuberger Berman on behalf of clients.
- DMI Group, a New Delhi-based consumer lending company, raised $123 million in funding. Nexon led the round. Read more.
- Affinivax, a Lexington, Mass.-based vaccine platform, raised $120 million in Series B funding. Viking Global Investors led the round, and was joined by investors including Bain Capital and Ziff Capital. Read more.
- Bestow Inc., a Dallas-based life insurance platform, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Valar Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including NEA, Morpheus Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, and Sammons Financial.
- Miro, a San Francisco digital whiteboard maker, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Iconiq Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Accel. Read more.
- Modalku, an Indonesia-based P2P lender, raised $40 million in Series C funding. Existing backers include SoftBank Ventures Korea, Sequoia India, Alpha JWC Ventures, and Golden Gate Ventures. Read more.
- Digits, a San Francisco-based fintech startup, raised $22 million in Series B funding. GV led the round. Read more.
- Randori, a Waltham, Mass.-based cybersecurity startup, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Harmony Partners led the round, and was joined by investors including Accomplice, .406 Ventures and Legion Capital. Read more.
- Gauzy, an Israeli light-adjusting windshields maker, raised $10 million in Series C funding. Hyundai led the round, and was joined by investors including Blue Red Partners VC and Avery Dennison. Read more.
- Igloo, a Singapore-based insurance tech startup, raised $8.2 million in extended Series A funding. InVent led the round, and was joined by investors including Openspace Ventures, and Linear Capital. Read more.
- SensorFlow, a Singapore-based proptech startup, raised $8.3 million in Series A+ funding led the round. Openspace Ventures and Gaw Capital Partners led the round. Read more.
- Nuvocargo, a New York-based digital freight forwarder and customs broker for U.S.-Mexico trade, raised $5.3 million in seed funding. NFX and ALLVP co-led the round, and were joined by One Way Ventures, Maya Capital, and Magma Partners.
- Opera Event, an Oakland, Calif.-based platform for influencers to get sponsorships, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Antera led the round, and was joined by investors including Atlas Ventures, Everblue, and Konvoy Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Providence Strategic Growth invested in Next Glass, a Wilmington, N.C.-based provider of software to the beverage alcohol industry. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- ShoreView invested in Victory Air and Equipment, a Victoria, Texas-based distributor of sandblasting equipment and paint. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Apax Partners acquired Coalfire, a Westminster, Colo.-based provider of cybersecurity advisory and assessment services.
- Paragon Partners acquired Castolin Eutectic, a Kriftel, Germany-based provider of welding, brazing and coating technologies, from the Messer Group. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) is in advanced talks for bankruptcy funding, per the Wall Street Journal citing sources. Read more.
- Vonovia has tapped advisers to explore a second attempt at taking over Deutsche Wohnen, a Germany-based property developer. The deal would result in a $40 billion giant, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- Talks between iDreamSky Technology Holdings and CVC Capital Partners to jointly acquire Leyou Technologies, a Hong Kong-listed video games company, have stalled, per Bloomberg. The deal valued Leyou at $1.2 billion. Read more.
- Terminal acquired ROIKOI, an AI-powered employee referral software company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Gojek acquired a Moka, a Jakarta, Indonesia-based mobile point-of-sale startup, for about $130 million, Bloomberg reports citing sources.
- Travelex, a British forex firm backed by Finablr (LSE: FIN), is up for sale. Read more.
IPOs
- ORIC Pharmaceuticals, a South San Francisco-based Phase 1 biotech developing molecule therapies for cancer, raised $120 million in an upsized IPO of 7.5 million shares priced at $16 apiece. It has yet to post a revenue and posted losses of $27 million in 2019. The Column Group (22% pre-offering), Topspin Fund (16%), and OrbiMed (12%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “ORIC.” Read more.
- CC Neuberger Principal I, a SPAC led by Chinh Chu and investment firm Neuberger Berman, raised $360 million, above a previously expected $300 million.
- Allpark Empreendimentos, a Brazilian parking lot operator, is planning an initial public offering in May to raise up to 387.8 million reais ($71.30 million). Read more.
- Imagination Technologies, a U.K.-based chipmaker, plans to list the company in London, New York, or Hong Kong. Canyon Bridge backs the company. Read more.
- Yara, a Norwegian fertiliser maker , has called off plans to spin off its industrial nitrogens business through an IPO due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Read more.
- , a fantasy sports games platform, will go public via a merger with Diamond Eagle Acquisition, a SPAC. It will list on the Nasdaq as "DKNG." DraftKings , a fantasy sports games platform, will go public via a merger with Diamond Eagle Acquisition, a SPAC. It will list on the Nasdaq as "DKNG."
EXITS
- Vector Capital sold Saba Software, a Dublin, Calif.-based talent management software provider, to Cornerstone OnDemand for about $1.3 billion.
F+FS
- Blackstone is seeking to raise $7 billion for its 4th GSO credit opportunities fund, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Cyprium Investment Partners closed its fifth fund with $445 million of committed capital.
PEOPLE
- Clearlake Capital Group named Fred Ebrahemi as Chief Operating Officer.
- York Private Equity added Harish Nataraj as a Managing Director. Prior to joining York, he was a Partner and Managing Director at Angelo Gordon’s Private Equity Group.
- MetaProp hired Maureen Waters as a Partner. Waters was previously president of the real estate tech firm Ten-X,
- Mayfield Equity Partners promoted Paul Reading to Managing Director.


fortune--2020-04-24--Trump’s comments on disinfecting the lungs sparks urgent warning from doctors, makers of Lysol

The coronavirus doesn’t last as long on door handles and other nonporous surfaces when it’s exposed to sunlight, higher temperatures and humidity, according to a U.S. government study.
“The virus is dying at a much more rapid pace” from exposure to humidity or heat, Bill Bryan, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department, said at a White House news conference Thursday.
President Donald Trump has previously expressed interest in whether summer weather would end the outbreak of the virus, suggesting in February that warmer spring temperatures could eliminate cases by this month.
More than 870,000 people in the U.S. have been confirmed infected with the virus and more than 49,000 have died. About 20,000 new cases were added on Thursday.
Bryan suggested the new U.S. research offered practical tips for many Americans, including “increasing the temperature and humidity for potentially contaminated indoor spaces” in order to kill the virus on surfaces. At a temperature of 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity in the summer sun, for example, the research showed the virus would last just two minutes on a porous surface. Dry environments Bryan said, may require “extra care.”
‘Very Powerful Light’
Trump appeared intrigued by the research after Bryan’s presentation.
“Suppose we hit the body with a tremendous ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said, following Bryan’s presentation. “I think that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it.”
Researchers could also bring “the light inside the body” Trump said, “either through the skin or in some other way.”
The World Health Organization has warned against using UV lamps to sterilize any part of the body, saying it can cause skin irritation.
Bryan also said that research had shown bleach could kill the virus in saliva or respiratory fluids in five minutes and isopropyl alcohol could kill it even more quickly. Trump suggested there would be more testing there, too.
“The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute,” he said. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?” He said it would be “almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs.”
Lysol and Dettol maker Reckitt Benckiser Plc has stated that “under no circumstance” should its disinfectant products be administered into the human body, through injection, ingestion or any other route.
The company issued the advice on Friday morning, after being asked whether internal administration of disinfectants “may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus”, amid recent speculation and social media activity.
Not a Treatment
Bleach is a toxic chemical, and inhaling it could damage the lungs.
“Inhaling chlorine bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs,” said John Balmes, a pulmonoligist a Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. “The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant.”
“Not even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe,” Balmes said in a telephone interview. “It’s a totally ridiculous concept.”
Disinfecting surfaces is an important practice in infection control. The coronavirus is fragile outside the body, and is essentially a packet of genetic information wrapped in a packet of lipids. Hand washing with soap is particularly effective in cleaning it and stopping transmission.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Americans to be careful with cleaning products in their rush to use cleaners and disinfectants, which have been snapped up from store shelves and are still hard to find at many retailers. Poisonings related to cleaners and disinfectants rose significantly in March, according to the CDC. In one case, a woman was sent to the hospital after filling her sink with bleach solution, vinegar and hot water to soak her vegetables.
Weather Matters
As some U.S. states begin planning to roll back social-distancing restrictions, an important question has become whether summer heat might impact the virus — and whether the fall might bring a new outbreak, as some experts inside and outside the government have suggested.
Weather and UV rays are often an important factor in the transmission of infectious diseases. Transmission of the flu, for example, is often correlated with cold temperatures and dry air. One study found that in northern Europe, low temperature and low UV indexes coincided with peaks of the flu virus in the period between 2010 and 2018.
“We know that respiratory viruses are quite seasonal. Coronaviruses are also respiratory viruses, and we had hope and anticipation it would be, too,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. But, he said, not all coronaviruses show strong seasonal variation, and it’s not clear that this one will.
Scientists continue to research the new coronavirus, and the pathogen has circulated in parts of the world with high, humid temperatures. Singapore is experiencing a surge of cases despite hot, humid weather. And in the developed world, many people spend much of their time indoors in controlled, cooler, drier environments without direct sunlight.
Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health scientist on the White House task force, said in an April 9 television interview that, “one should not assume that we are going to be rescued by a change in the weather. You must assume that the virus will continue to do its thing.”
Studies of other coronaviruses have suggested that certain types of UV light may act as a sort of disinfectant. Sunlight contains three types of ultraviolet light, and one of them, UVC is often used to sterilize medical equipment. In China and Italy, robots that disinfect using UVC light have reportedly been deployed in hospitals.
Some studies, however, have suggested the opposite. One recent study of cities in Southern China, for example, found that heat and UV rays seemed to have no impact on the virus.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—These publicly traded companies took millions in PPP loan money
—How Home Depot and Lowe’s are preparing for their busy home improvement season during coronavirus uncertainty
—Which companies’ stocks will thrive after the coronavirus crash?
—Late payments soar, revealing extent of coronavirus pain on European companies
—5 veteran investors on how to approach the coronavirus stock market
—Forget “wet markets” and bats: For scientists, failing environmental policies have created a boom time for outbreaks
—Is A.I. better at diagnosing illnesses than doctors? Don’t believe all the hype
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
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