fortune--2020-07-08--China is testing its digital currency on a new platform—with 500 million users

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing Technology Co. will test a pilot version of China’s digital currency, according to a company statement on Wednesday that announced a “strategic partnership” with the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, has been researching a national digital currency known as Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) since 2014 and ramped up its efforts to roll it out last year.
The launch date and other specifics of the Didi project are not publicly known.
Didi’s huge customer base, existing digital payment infrastructure, and range of services make it an ideal platform for the digital currency’s biggest trial so far. Didi has more than 550 million users worldwide, most of them in China; it claims more than 90% of China’s ride-hailing market.
Didi is often described as “China’s Uber,” but its services are broader than private car ride-hailing. It offers taxi-hailing, carpooling, freight transport, delivery, and logistics services, and has an autonomous driving subsidiary that received more than $500 million in funding in May for testing and development.
Launching the currency on the Didi mobile app would automatically place the payment system directly in the pockets of half a billion Chinese citizens. Since Didi offers food and merchant delivery services as well as car- and taxi-hailing, the currency could be trialed across those sectors, too.
Didi is also eyeing an expansion into digital payment services outside of China. In Tony Qiu, chief operating officer of Didi’s international operations, told Reuters in April that “acquiring and working with payment companies which have the banking license, payment, or financial technologies would bring advantages to Didi’s global business.” Qiu did not elaborate on what those advantages were.
The PBOC’s pilot program with Didi will be one of the first real-world rollouts of China’s digital currency. A district in the Chinese city of Suzhou used the currency in May to pay public sector workers part of their travel subsidies. Food outlets, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, were included in a PBOC list of firms scheduled to test the digital payment for small transactions in a new city being built near Beijing, according to an unconfirmed local media report in April.
The digital currency will be backed and issued by China’s central bank. When launched, customers will be able to link their bank card to a PBOC app that will enable them to convert the yuan in their bank account to digital yuan, the South China Morning Post reported in May. People without bank accounts will also be able to set up digital currency wallets.
Currently, users can pay for Didi services through Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay, both digital wallets. It’s not yet known whether the digital currency would be distributed to Didi users through these existing digital wallets or via a separate central bank wallet, but existing reliance on such wallets means consumers are primed to make digital payments.
Since its founding in 2012, Didi has beaten out the competition—merging with local rivals and acquiring Uber China—to emerge as China’s primary ride-hailing app and on-demand transportation service. Didi is one of China’s biggest tech companies, with financial backing from Apple, Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, and Japan’s SoftBank Group. It has an estimated valuation of around $53 billion.
Didi’s daily passenger numbers dropped early this year as coronavirus lockdowns swept across China and people stayed in their homes. The company worked hard to bring customers back, and invested over $14 million to install protective plastic dividers in its millions of cars to prevent the spread of the virus and ensure passenger safety. Didi’s chief executive in early June said hailing requests that month had returned to the level of the same period the year before.
This article has been updated.


fortune--2020-07-08--Healthcare is in the midst of a ‘paradigm shift’

Move over Nasdaq .
This exchange has been killing it over the past month

Good morning.
Will the pandemic lead to a revolution in health care science?
That was the tantalizing possibility I took away from day one of Fortune Brainstorm Health. This was our first-ever all-virtual conference, and it demonstrated the amazing possibilities of the format. The team, lead by Fortune Editor-in-Chief Clifton Leaf, assembled a Who’s Who of health care leaders—on one platform, if not in one place—for a fascinating day of discussions about the future.
Many of the participants emphasized the extraordinary cooperation the pandemic has prompted in health science—something that I’ve written about here before. “We are all on various collaborations together,” said Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan. “An unprecedented level of cooperation between institutions of business, government, academia, and institutions like the NIH,” said Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Giovanni Caforio. “Lots of shots on goal,” said Amgen CEO Robert Bradway.
I’ve assumed that the unusual spasm of pharma cooperation would pass with the pandemic. But Caforio argued otherwise. “My hope is this will be a galvanizing moment,” he said. “What we have learned is to work collaboratively like never before, to challenge our thinking, and to accelerate the drug development process. We have done things in six months that would have taken five to ten years.” He believes the industry can “take the learnings of the last six months and apply them to other challenges, like cancer”—or heart disease.
Jennifer Doudna, the biochemist who helped pioneer gene-editing technology CRISPR, cited the work of Thomas Kuhn, who argued scientific revolutions tend to be episodic—with “paradigm shifts”—and not continuous. “We are in a moment like that,” Doudna said. “We are seeing some really interesting things happening right now,” born from the pandemic, that are accelerating science. “These are all changes that are likely to stick around.”
Let’s hope she’s right. We need a silver lining.
Also on the Brainstorm Health virtual stage yesterday was Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, whose company is pursuing a COVID vaccine using a new, RNA-based technology platform. Bancel says the company still intends to start its Phase 3 trials of the vaccine with 30,000 people by the end of July.
You can read more from today’s Brainstorm Health here. Up today: J&J CEO Alex Gorsky, Gavi CEO Seth Berkley, and a special performance for the event by pianist Lang Lang.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS Out of the WHO President Donald Trump has formally notified the WHO the U.S. will pull out of the organization over criticism of its relationship with China and its handling of the pandemic. The U.S. has been a member for 72 years, and is one of the largest funders of the organization. The removal won't go into effect until next July, after the election. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says the country will remain in the agency if he wins. WSJ Deutsche Bank settles Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $150 million to settle claims it broke compliance rules in its dealing with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bank had been accused of failing to flag or prevent millions of dollars of suspicious transactions, even though Epstein had already been convicted of sex trafficking charges. Fortune Novavax spike Shares of a little known Maryland drug company, Novavax, spiked after the U.S. government awarded it $1.6 billion to produce 100 million doses of a covid vaccine. And yet, writes Fortune's Jeff John Roberts,"Novavax has never brought a drug to market." It's also facing stiff competition. Under the same program—Operation Warp Speed—the government has also backed the likes of Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Fortune Lagarde goes green Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has committed to examine using the bank's EUR 2.8 trillion ($3 trillion) asset purchase scheme to make the eurozone economy greener. It is the first such commitment by an ECB president, but her central bank peers have increasingly pushed green financing forwards. FT AROUND THE WATER COOLER TikTok Ban? Cue the angry teens. President Donald Trump says he is considering banning the app, famous for launching viral dances and comedy sketches, over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The app's parent company is China’s ByteDance Ltd. Fortune HK dollar peg After reports that advisors to President Donald Trump want the U.S. to undermine Hong Kong's longstanding dollar peg, some economists warned that doing so would require measures like sanctions on banks, or drying up the swaps market, and that such a move would be both impractical—and would hurt U.S. interests. Fortune Mafia bonds Bonds backed by the criminal proceeds of one of Italy's most notorious criminal networks have worked their way into the most respectable reaches of banking, an FT investigation has found. In just one case, bonds backed by front companies run by the notorious Calabrian ’Ndrangheta were purchased by a large European private bank—with consulting services provided by EY. FT End of the 'lipstick index'? The so-called 'lipstick index'—the idea that, during economic downturns, consumers turn to affordable pick-me-ups like a new lipstick—was first floated by the chairman of Estée Lauder after 2001. It's always been difficult to be prove—but in the age of face masks, it may truly be under threat. Fortune This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Katherine Dunn.


fortune--2020-07-08--Move over Nasdaq. This exchange has been killing it over the past month

Facing a massive income tax hit , Britain puts the heat on bankers to get back to the office

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning. Since late March, a reliable pattern has formed in the markets: the morning after a down day, investors reliably jump right back in and buy on the dips. That dynamic is being tested today as Europe and the U.S. futures are in the red for a second straight day.
There is one exception to this: mainland China. The Shanghai Composite is on a run that would make Nasdaq bulls green with envy.
Let’s check in on today’s action.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trade. Shanghai continues its impressive three-week run, up 1.7% today. It’s now climbed more than 17% since mid-June.
continues its impressive three-week run, up It’s now climbed more than since mid-June. There are rumblings that the Trump Administration is looking to undermine Hong Kong’s longstanding U.S. dollar peg as a way to punish China for its new restrictive national security law. Economists think such a move would be “ self-defeating .” HSBC shares sank in Hong Kong on the news.
longstanding as a way to punish China for its new restrictive national security law. Economists think such a move would be “ .” sank in Hong Kong on the news. President Trump has confirmed he’s thinking of banning the extremely popular TikTok video app as a way to punish China for [checks notes] its handling of coronavirus. Cue angry teens marching on Washington.
Europe
The European bourses fell at the open, extending yesterday’s losses. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.7% in early trading.
fell at the open, extending yesterday’s losses. The benchmark was down in early trading. Europe has managed the coronavirus health crisis as well as anyone, but the economic damage will linger. The European Commission yesterday cut its full-year GDP forecast for the second time in two months.
as well as anyone, but the economic damage will linger. The European Commission yesterday cut its for the second time in two months. In that same report from yesterday, the commission cited failed trade talks between the EU and U.K. as a major growth risk. A few hours later, Britain’s Boris Johnson told Angela Merkel the U.K. is ready to move on without a deal.
U.S.
The major averages closed in the red on Tuesday. It was a broad-based drop that saw the big tech rally fade and travel and retail stocks tank on reopening worries.
and and tank on reopening worries. Novavax bucked the trend, closing up a whopping 32% yesterday. What’s Novavax, and why did the U.S. government award it a $1.6 billion contract ? More to the point, can it save Americans from the coronavirus?
bucked the trend, closing up a whopping yesterday. What’s Novavax, and why did the U.S. government award it a ? More to the point, can it save Americans from the coronavirus? I get the occasional email from Bull Sheet readers asking me why I’m singling out the U.S. coronavirus numbers when the markets seem to be so unperturbed. (And judging by the volume of chatter on Bloomberg and CNBC about this very same topic, they’re getting the same questions from viewers). Here’s one reason: The rate of positive tests in the U.S. is a meaningful metric, public health officials say, for determining whether it’s safe to reopen stores, business and public places. The latest surge in America’s South and West means it’s no longer safe to reopen in much of the country. And, perhaps worse, the overall infection number are trending in the wrong direction.
Elsewhere
Gold is down, but the shiny yellow stuff did surpass $1,800 an ounce yesterday, its highest level since 2011 .
is down, but the shiny yellow stuff did surpass $1,800 an ounce yesterday, its . The dollar is flat.
is flat. Crude is falling again. Brent edged below $43/barrel.
***
Moving on
In times of major crises, economists and social scientists often notice jarring disruptions in a country’s internal migration patterns. War, famine and disease uproot populations, and that has a huge impact on the communities they leave, and on the communities they move to.
Coronavirus is forcing one of these great internal migration shocks in the United States in 2020. According to Pew Research Center, millions of Americans—roughly one in five U.S. adults—have been forced to move in recent months as the pandemic forced the closure of businesses and schools across the country.
Young adults and minorities have been disproportionately impacted, as today’s chart shows.
The abrupt closure of university dormitories in March was a huge disruption for a lot of American families. It forced a lot of young, educated Americans to abandon their studies, internships or work-experience opportunities to move back home or to wherever they could find a place to ride out the downturn.
Job losses, and the resulting hit on personal finances, also forced Americans to scatter.
The great COVID migration of 2020 has the potential to create a crisis within a crisis. And it will hit the most vulnerable the hardest.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
A note from my Fortune colleagues on a timely new initiative:
Many companies are speaking out against racial injustices right now. But how do they fare in their own workplaces? Black employees in the corporate world, we want to hear from you: Please submit your anonymous thoughts and anecdotes here. https://bit.ly/WorkingWhileBlack
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Questionable ties. Deutsche Bank is in hot water again. New York's financial services regulator fined the German lender $150 million for, among other things, its questionable links to the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
"Functionally flawed." The group boycotting Facebook's ad platform met with Mark Zuckerberg yesterday to iron out their differences. It didn't go very well.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
The "lipstick index"
Economists and market observers love coining catchy phrases to explain complex consumer phenomena. One that's been repeated over the years is the "lipstick index," credited to cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder following the September 11 attacks. His take: lipstick sales routinely withstand any major geopolitical or economic crisis. His observation has been challenged multiple times over the years, but has barely been smudged—that is, until the coronavirus pandemic hit. Fortune's Katherine Dunn explains why it may no longer apply.


fortune--2020-07-08--Congress created PPP loans—then at least 12 members reaped their benefits

At least a dozen lawmakers have ties to organizations that received federal coronavirus aid, according to newly released government data, highlighting how Washington insiders were both author and beneficiary of one of the biggest government programs in U.S. history.
Under pressure from Congress and outside groups, the Trump administration this week disclosed the names of some loan recipients in the $659 billion Paycheck Protection Program, launched in April to help smaller businesses keep Americans employed during the pandemic. Connections to lawmakers, and the organizations that work to influence them, were quickly apparent.
Among businesses that received money was a California hotel partially owned by the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as a shipping business started by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Car dealerships owned by at least three Republican House members — Reps. Roger Williams of Texas, Vern Buchanan of Florida and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania — received money. So, too, did fast-food franchises owned by Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., a law firm owned by the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and the former law firm of Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., which employs his wife.
Money also flowed to a farming and equipment business owned by the family of Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., and a regional casino company led by the husband of Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev.
Members of Congress and their families are not barred from receiving loans under the PPP, and there is no evidence they received special treatment. Loans were granted to Democrats and Republicans alike, something President Donald Trump’s campaign was quick to highlight when records showed donors to his campaign coffers were among the earliest beneficiaries.
Hundreds of millions of dollars also flowed to political consultants, opposition research shops, law firms, advocacy organizations and trade associations whose work is based around influencing government and politics.
While voting, lobbying and ultimately benefiting from legislation aren’t illegal, advocates say the blurred lines risk eroding public trust in the federal pandemic response as Congress begins debating yet another round of coronavirus relief.
“It certainly looks bad and smells bad,” said Aaron Scherb, a spokesperson for Common Cause, a watchdog group whose education arm was also approved for a loan through the program. Members of Congress should not be allowed to vote on bills in which they can personally benefit, he said.
As of June 30, the Treasury Department program had handed out $521 billion to industries including manufacturing, construction, restaurants and hotels.
Treasury identified just a fraction of the total borrowers Monday, naming only companies that got more than $150,000. Those firms made up less than 15% of the nearly 5 million small companies and organizations that received assistance.
Many of the lawmakers connected to loan awards emphasized they weren’t part of the application process.
A spokesperson for Pelosi said her husband, Paul, is a minority investor in the company that owns the El Dorado Hotel in the wine-country town of Sonoma, Calif. Paul Pelosi has a 8.1% stake in the company, valued at $250,000 to $500,000, Pelosi’s office said.
“Mr. Pelosi is a minor, passive investor in this company,” said the Democratic speaker’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill. “He was not involved in or even aware of this PPP loan.” The firm, EDI Associates, is listed as a recipient of a loan between $350,000 and $1 million.
New York-based Foremost Maritime Co., founded by Chao’s parents and run by her sister, was cleared for a loan valued between $350,000 and $1 million. McConnell, a Republican seeking reelection in Kentucky, said Tuesday: “Neither my wife, nor I, have anything to do with that business and didn’t know anything about it.”
The Shaheen & Gordon law firm in Dover, New Hampshire, got a loan of $1 million to $2 million. The firm is owned by Jeanne Shaheen’s husband, William Shaheen. A title company partially owned by William Shaheen got a $160,000 loan and a half dozen companies he partially owns or another relative owns got loans, below $150,000.
Jeanne Shaheen said she “was not involved in any way in applying for those loans nor do I have anything to do with their businesses, and Congress had no role in processing PPP applications.”
Four car dealerships owned by Kelly received $600,000 to $1.4 million. Mike Kelly Automotive Group, Mike Kelly Automotive LP and Mike Kelly Hyundai and Kelly Chevrolet-Cadillac, all near Pittsburgh, received the money. A spokesman for Kelly said he wasn’t part of the loan application and isn’t involved in the operations of the dealerships, in accordance with ethics rules.
Williams, who had a net worth of over $27 million in 2018, received a loan for his Roger Williams Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealership in Weatherford, Texas. Williams is president and CEO of JRW Corp. of Fort Worth, which is listed as receiving a loan of $1 million to $2 million. “Like every other company who accepted a small business loan, our business qualified under law and regulation, and today over 100 of our employees are grateful that we did,” Williams said in a statement.
Buchanan, whose net worth is estimated at $74 million, received three loans for car dealerships totaling $2.7 million to $7 million. He told the Tampa Bay Times that he hoped any eligible small business “would use the program to make sure their workers continued to get paid during this difficult period.”
At least five car dealerships owned by the husband of Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., also received loans, each ranging from $350,000 to $1 million, the data show.
Other lawmakers, while distancing themselves from the loan process, sought to portray the PPP program as a success story.
Hern’s Tulsa-based KTAK Corp., a management company for several McDonald’s restaurants, received $1 million to $2 million. Hern isn’t involved in the day-to-day operations, but “he is happy to share that the family business was able to keep all employees either at their current level of employment or move part-time employees to full time,” Hern’s chief of staff, Cameron Foster, said. Four businesses owned by fellow Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., received at least $800,000.
Full House Resorts, a Las Vegas-based casino company led by Lee’s husband, Daniel, got two loans totaling $5.6 million, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said the funds would be used to rehire several hundred employees and prepare to reopen two casinos in Indiana and Colorado.
A spokesperson said Tuesday that Lee did not know about the company’s intention to apply for a loan when she and other Nevada lawmakers pushed for a rule change to allow small casinos to receive the loans. She had no influence over the application or any aspect of Full House’s business or decision making, spokesperson Jesus Espinoza said.
Two wineries tied to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and an Iowa farm run by his family received loans worth at least $2 million. The wineries got separate loans worth $1 million to $2 million, and an Iowa dairy farm that is tied to his relatives received $150,000 to $350,000.


fortune--2020-07-08--Economists say U.S. threat to undermine Hong Kong dollar peg is ‘self-defeating’

The threat of U.S. action to undermine Hong Kong’s longstanding U.S. dollar peg is highly unlikely to become reality given the practical difficulties of pursing such a path and the damage it would do to U.S. interests, economists say.
Economists reacted after a report that some advisers to President Donald Trump want the U.S. to undermine the Hong Kong dollar peg as the administration considers options to punish China for limiting Hong Kong’s autonomy, according to people familiar with the matter. Hong Kong has pegged its currency to the U.S. dollar since 1983, allowing it to fluctuate within a fairly strict band that has centered around 7.8 per U.S. dollar.
The most straightforward way to implement such a strategy would be for the U.S. to impose limits on the ability of American and potentially other foreign banks to sell U.S. dollars to Chinese lenders, possibly via sanctions on Chinese banks, said Ding Shuang, chief economist for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered Plc in Hong Kong. But that proposal opens the U.S. to potentially damaging consequences, he said.
That approach “sounds quite radical and will have profound and unpredictable implications not only for China’s banks, but also the U.S. banks and the global financial market,” Ding said. “I see a low likelihood for the U.S. to resort to such a potentially self-defeating approach, before options that cause more problems for China than for the U.S. are exhausted.”
China’s strong external position — including a current account surplus, high foreign exchange reserves and anticipated speedier recovery from the pandemic — are factors that will help to mitigate the fallout from such a step, Ding said.
Read from Bloomberg Intelligence: Why H.K. Dollar’s Peg Is as Strong as Ever
The proposal is said to face strong opposition from some in the U.S. administration and the idea of attacking the dollar peg is lower on the list of options under discussion — because it would hurt Hong Kong banks and the U.S. more than China.
Dollar Funding
Yet if the U.S. were to impose such restrictions, one way would be for the U.S. Treasury to limit U.S. banks from providing dollar funding to Hong Kong and Chinese banks, which would drive up costs, said Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist with AxiCorp.
“Drying up the swap market would be the easiest vehicle,” he said. “To the degree they can exert that pressure is yet to be seen, as U.S. banks don’t want to give up access to China markets.”
Other financial measures are on the table, especially given the U.S. took the step even before imposition of the security law to declare that Hong Kong was no longer significantly autonomous from China. Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia ex-Japan at Daiwa Securities Group Inc. in Hong Kong, said an “extreme” alternative would be to cut off Hong Kong from SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication, a network used to clear global currency transactions.
“That’s a nuclear option — it’s unlikely but not impossible,” he said. “Without access to the global U.S. dollar pool, the Hong Kong dollar will not be functional.”
A less dramatic option would be to set limits on exposure to the Hong Kong dollar for U.S. banks and firms, said Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered.
“In recent days the U.S. has taken some totally unexpected actions like withdrawing from the WHO,” she said, referring to the World Health Organization. “So the likelihood of the U.S. doing something is still very likely, it’s just likely to be less drastic in terms of impacting the convertibility between the HKD and USD.”


fortune--2020-07-08--Good health is good business. Here’s why.

COVID-19 has forced health onto the agenda of every business around the world. Companies must address health and safety risks as health regulations and market conditions continue to shift. It’s understandable that many business leaders can’t wait to get back to “normal.” But retaining a focus on health can deliver lasting economic benefits.
Here’s why: The pandemic and its effects are forecast to cost the global economy up to 8% in real gross domestic product this year alone, but each year poor health costs twice as much, around 15% of global real GDP from premature deaths and lost productive potential.
Now consider the flip side: Investing in better health can boost the economy and increase productive capacity now when we most need it. Companies would be big beneficiaries. Sickness absences would decline; healthier workers would be less distracted by managing their (or their loved ones’) conditions; and fewer workers would retire early because of health conditions. A healthier workforce would translate into lower health care costs. And what’s more, healthier aging would expand both the future workforce and consumption as fewer people die prematurely and healthier older consumers continue to fuel demand.
At the McKinsey Global Institute, we spent the past year researching what it would take to make the world’s population healthier and then sizing the potential social and economic benefits. We found that by using known interventions more widely, things like adopting healthy behaviors, expanding access to primary care, and improved adherence to medication, the global disease burden could be reduced by 40% over the next two decades.
The individual health benefits would be tremendous: A 65-year-old in 2040 could be as healthy as a 55-year-old today; infant mortality would decline by 65%; the health inequity gap would narrow; and 230 million more people would be alive by 2040.
The economy would get a much-needed boost. Adding up all the ways better health lifts the economy, we estimated that better health could increase global GDP by $12 trillion in 2040—an 8% boost, or 0.4% faster growth a year.
And investing in health produces a high economic return. For every $1 invested, we found an incremental economic benefit of $2 to $4. In higher income countries, implementation costs could be more than offset by productivity gains in health care delivery. Emerging economies will continue to need more investment to build out their health infrastructure.
Our research leaves us with a strong conviction: Improving health has the potential to be a societal and economic game changer. After all, few investments deliver against so many of today’s social needs, substantially improving well-being and reducing inequity, while also delivering an impressive shot in the arm to the global economy—and all with a high return on investment.
So what can companies do? Focus on three areas: Invest in the short- and long-term health of their employees; create inclusive work environments; and actively contribute to the development of healthy communities.
There are many ways to invest in the health of your workforce. A good place to start is conventional occupational health and safety, yet that isn’t enough. In today’s work environment occupational risks are increasingly related to mental health stressors, sleep health, and high levels of sedentariness. Research shows that chronic conditions including low-back pain, mental health, and migraines can reduce the productivity of workers by up to 5%. So improving workplace health matters.
Many companies are already experimenting with this. Citibank is one example. Its health programs include rewards for participating in health assessments, sustaining health activities, and reaching health goals; support for health improvement including organized fitness-related events and challenges; and access to health programs such as WW at Work and health coaching.
Some companies have found low-cost and relatively simple health promotion strategies can make a difference to productivity. For example, a public sector employer in Middlesborough, in the United Kingdom, used health assessment questionnaires to understand the needs of staff and codeveloped a flexible and multifaceted health promotion toolkit. This program included family days, team-building days, and health walks. This led to a 44% reduction in sickness absence, from an average of 4.3 days per employee a year to 2.4 days.
Next, consider promoting more inclusive work environments. Employers that adapt the workplace to take advantage of changing demographics often benefit from higher levels of retention. This also means offering (re)training, creating a culture that addresses discrimination, offering assistive technologies, and making buildings accessible to people with mobility challenges. We also find that workplaces that offer flexible working practices help informal caregivers to stay in work.
One example is BMW. Managers at a BMW car production plant in Dingolfing, Germany, worked with employees to redesign the production line to address tasks that older workers found troublesome. The focus was on low-cost ergonomic changes that reduced physical stress. Productivity on the adapted line was equal to equivalent lines with a younger workforce age mix by volume, quality was higher, and sickness absence was below the plant average. The program has been replicated at BMW plants elsewhere.
Finally, consider fostering healthy communities. This might mean assessing your company’s health “footprint,” the ways in which activities contribute to the health outcomes of individuals, communities, and whole populations, and making health impact a priority within wider corporate social responsibility programs. For example, some global companies have included commitments to provide clean water, hygiene, and sanitation for their employees and, in some instances, their partners and suppliers, in water-stressed regions of the world.
Our research shows that 70% of actions to improve health happen before a sick patient seeks care. Half of that comes from living in healthier environments, societies, and workplaces that encourage healthy behaviors and mindsets. Long-term prevention and health promotion cannot simply be left to health care providers or health care systems. It is quite literally everybody’s business. And just plain good business at that.
Jaana Remes and Shubham Singhal are partners at the McKinsey Global Institute, the business and economics research division of McKinsey & Co.


fortune--2020-07-09--Why Latin America’s economic security is key to fixing U.S. immigration

Digital health needs to survive beyond the pandemic

The Supreme Court has preserved a safe harbor for Dreamers for now, but immigration will stay center stage in U.S. politics. If we’re truly going to attain shared prosperity in the Americas region, U.S. foreign policy must stimulate sustainable economic growth in the countries people leave to migrate here.
In a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, former Vice President Joe Biden made this exact argument, touting the Obama administration’s provision of $750 million in aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Biden is right that mass immigration won’t be stopped by bluster or by walls. It will only subside if people see a real future in staying where they are.
But government aid, even tied to reforms like fighting corruption, cannot by itself create sustainable growth that leads to long-term prosperity. We need to invest in new ideas.
Next-generation special economic zones are emerging in Latin American countries right now. These zones are similar to the Opportunity Zones that Congress created in 2017 to incentivize long-term investments in low-income communities across the U.S. The zones in Latin America employ different laws and regulations to protect individual freedoms and enable business opportunities and investments that these countries desperately need. If the U.S. strategically supports a network of these new zones and promotes investments there, we can spark a broader economic revolution that will ripple throughout the region.
(My company, Próspera, has launched a semiautonomous economic zone on the Honduran island of Roatán in cooperation with the Honduran government, along with a forthcoming zone in La Ceiba, Honduras. Further zones are currently under consideration.)
Latin America already has around 500 zones, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development World Investment Report 2019. To determine which ones are worth investing in, we must look beyond tax benefits to consider how a zone improves the rule of law. It should both reduce regulatory barriers that can stifle business activity and guard against parasitic corruption. Many of the existing zones hold this potential. According to a proprietary EY report, the most advanced zones in Latin America can create a business-friendly environment comparable to the U.S.’s and the world’s most dynamic hubs of enterprise.
It’s also important to consider whether a special economic zone will be durable—for example, whether the host country has amended its constitution or core laws to allow for it. This signals a nation’s long-term commitment to economic freedom and growth, rather than an opportunistic cash grab that could be wiped away by the results of one election.
Another important indicator is whether the zone’s charter establishes rules for individual freedoms backed by human rights guarantees and robust third-party enforcement mechanisms. The use of secure digital technology for government-related transactions, such as applying for required permits, is also a promising sign. These measures make public transactions more cost-efficient, transparent, and accountable.
Special economic zones have time and again lifted people out of poverty. China used them aggressively in its rise to become a superpower. The GDP of Shenzhen, its most successful zone, grew from $4 million in 1980 to $374 billion in 2019. Today, the vast majority of the world’s electronics are manufactured there.
The same is possible in Latin America. Between 1985 and 2000, the Dominican Republic’s zone program created over 100,000 manufacturing jobs and reduced its overdependence on agriculture. Economists at Guatemala’s Universidad Francisco Marroquín predict that GDP per capita will grow from $2,500 to over $35,000 by 2050 within zones set up under Honduras’s new framework.
In the wake of economic devastation wrought by COVID-19, the U.S. needs to revive its economy and reduce its dependence on overextended supply chains. We can’t simply bring all manufacturing back into this country. For companies that can’t afford to locate operations here, special economic zones in Latin America afford them a cost-effective option for manufacturing and sourcing operations much closer to home.
An uncertain continuation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is no substitute for a smart immigration strategy. We must improve life in the countries that people leave to seek a better future. The U.S. should encourage the development of special economic zones in Latin America to relieve the driving pressure behind immigration. This is an indispensable part of the solution to the inequities underlying much of our national turmoil.
Erick A. Brimen is CEO of Honduras Próspera LLC. He wrote this op-ed in a personal capacity.


fortune--2020-07-08--Digital health needs to survive beyond the pandemic

Why Latin America ’ s economic security is key to fixing U.S. immigration

Good evening, readers. And apologies for the late send—we’ve had a busy few days.
We just wrapped up our first virtual Brainstorm Health conference. There’s no way that I can sum up the fascinating interviews, panels, discussions, and post-session write-ups in a single newsletter. We’ll be trickling through a whole bunch of the issues we addressed over the next few days (and for general coverage from our Fortune team, head right over here.)
But one of the main themes of this conference has centered on digital health and whether or not such such technologies can give a much-needed assist during the coronavirus pandemic.
The trouble is that these new resources, whether apps, better data-sharing, or better devices, are still guinea pigs. When it comes to contact tracing for COVID-19, “countries have just started to use it,” said Dr. David Feinberg of Google Health following a session on innovation and health care during the conference.
Coronavirus isn’t the beginning. But it has the potential to be the catalyst. That was a sentiment echoed by numerous panelists including former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her fellow attendees Baxter International CEO Joe Almeida and GE Healthcare CEO Kieran Murphy for those who have chronic conditions outside of COVID.
“We need to create a safety net where people can feel protected,” said Almeida during the session. Murphy added that GE has “deployed real time data to show where such capacity exists and divert patients to there… There needs to be a market where we can deploy telemedicine.”
It’s an issue that speaks to the needs of chronic disease, rare disease, and underserved communities all in one. Whether telehealth can confront these ills is a much broader question we’ll be tackling for years.
Read on for the day’s news, and look to this space for more coverage of our conference.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Can wearables be key to detecting COVID? Amy McDonough of FitBit added more to the conversation about the intersection of COVID and wearable devices. "We are getting less steps. We are moving less throughout the day, but our amount of purposeful activity [exercise] is actually going up. And what that is resulting in is statistically significant decreases in things like resting heart rate," McDonough said on Wednesday. (Fortune)
INDICATIONS
Biogen surges on its Alzheimer's gamble. Shares of Biogen rose more than 4% after the company submitted an application for its experimental, and controversial, Alzheimer's drug aducanumab to the FDA. This treatment will prove a milestone for the FDA. On the one hand, there are no approved therapies for Alzheimer's. On the other, it's been difficult to balance efficacy and safety versus what could be a high cost for a drug for dementia, which afflicts millions of people every year.
Novavax spikes from a federal boost. Readers may know about the various treatments being tried out for COVID vaccines and therapeutics. Here's one you may not know that well. My colleague Jeff John Roberts about sums it up: "The government's decision to grant Novavax such a large contract is remarkable given that Novavax has never brought a drug to market, and because other firms that received money under the same program—known as Operation Warp Speed—include drug industry titans like Johnson & Johnson and Astra Zeneca." Sound familiar? (Fortune)
REQUIRED READING
A Fortune 500 CEO on why companies must take a stand on racism and social issues, by Lucinda Shen
How Rwanda is beating the U.S. in the fight against coronavirus, by David Z. Morris
Apple and Google's contact tracing system gains more participants across the globe, by Aaron Pressman
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-07-08--Facebook removes fake accounts linked to Trump ally Roger Stone

Facebook said it will remove the accounts and brand pages for Roger Stone, a Republican operative who was convicted of lying to Congress during its investigation into Russian election interference.
The company said when it was investigating the Proud Boys, the far-right hate group that was banned by Facebook in 2018, it found a network of fake accounts posing as residents of Florida. The accounts posted about politics mostly between 2015 and 2017, promoting hacked material from Wikileaks, while also raising the profile of Stone’s books and media appearances.
Coordination by fake accounts violates Facebook’s rules. “Roger Stone’s personal accounts and his branded assets will be coming down as a part of this effort because we saw them deeply enmeshed in the activity here,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a press briefing.
Stone wrote in a text message that Facebook is fabricating excuses to censor him as part of what he called a broader effort by social media companies to silence U.S. President Donald Trump and other Republicans and conservatives.
“The claim that I have utilized or control unauthorized or fake accounts on any platform is categorically and provably false,” Stone said. “The assertion that my accounts have any formal or informal connection to the Proud Boys is categorically and provably false.”
Stone is scheduled to start a prison term on July 14. He has appealed to Donald Trump to grant him a pardon.
The network linked to Stone involved 54 Facebook accounts, 50 pages and four Instagram accounts, Facebook said in a statement. About 260,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages, and 61,500 followed one or more of the Instagram accounts. The group spent less than $308,000 on Facebook and Instagram advertising.


fortune--2020-07-08--Review: The Lenovo Flex 5G, the world’s first 5G laptop

Sitting on a bench in downtown Boston, I’m uploading and downloading files like a madman on the world’s first 5G laptop, the aptly named Lenovo Flex 5G. I can download Spike Lee’s new movie Da 5 Bloods from Netflix in under 30 seconds versus more like half an hour on regular wireless connections.
Wireless carriers have been promising amazing download speeds and other tricks from their new 5G networks, which are supposed to be 10 to 100 times as fast as the average 4G LTE connection. But it’s been a mixed bag so far.
The Flex 5G changes the equation.
For one, 5G on a laptop is a lot more useful than 5G on a phone. The first 5G phones are pricey—typically $1,000 or more—and aren’t used much to download files now that almost all video and music is streamed.
But on a laptop, there are all kinds of files we want to access, from high-resolution photos to graphics-packed PowerPoint decks to big data spreadsheets. Grabbing them from cloud storage, sharing them with coworkers, and updating them with fresh information all benefit from speedier 5G service. People also use their laptops for powerful web apps, like the online version of Adobe’s Lightroom photo editing software. Those apps work much better with fast connections.
And what a connection I have. On this bench, admittedly in one of the few areas in Boston where Verizon’s superfast 5G is available, downloads on the Flex 5G average more than 1.5 gigabits per second. That’s almost 50 times as fast as the average 4G download speed in the U.S., according to market tracker Ookla, and speedier than almost everyone’s wired home Internet connections.
I used the laptop to download a huge PowerPoint file from the web just by clicking on it. No delay whatsoever. Then I downloaded a dozen highly detailed photographs from my cloud storage provider at full resolution and attached them to email, again with almost no wait.
When I sent off the email, however, there was a much longer wait. Verizon’s 5G network in Boston only does downloads, not uploads. My average upload speed with the Flex 5G on this bench? A paltry 50 megabits per second, no faster than 4G.
So this is the part of the review where we must note that even if you buy this brand-new, $1,400 superfast 5G laptop, there are few places—very few places—where you can actually use it on 5G right now. Verizon, the exclusive carrier for the Flex, offers 5G in parts of 35 cities, with a goal of hitting 60 cities by year-end. But even in those cities, the 5G network covers a tiny fraction of the region. Verizon customers found 5G connectivity only 0.4% of the time in the U.S. in June, according to the latest report from Opensignal.
Here’s most of the Boston coverage map, for example (the darker red areas indicate where 5G coverage is available):
Even in the coverage areas, connections can be dicey. At one point, I moved to a nearby bench and ran a speed test. The laptop dropped the 5G connection and reverted automatically to 4G. The speed? Just 98 megabits per second.
On the other hand, I’m not generally walking around while using my laptop. Spotty 5G coverage is a much bigger problem for phone users on the go. If I could sit in a café with Verizon 5G coverage and use the Flex 5G, post-pandemic, I’d be all set.
In addition to buying the laptop, for $1,400 outright or $58 a month for 24 months, Verizon also requires a separate monthly connection fee for the device. It’s $30 a month for 5G service if you already have a wireless phone with the carrier or a heady $90 per month by itself. Cheaper plans are available with 4G connectivity, but that defeats the purpose of getting the Flex 5G.
In most other ways, the Flex 5G, which comes in one undistinguished color, “iron gray,” is a standard if expensive business laptop. It weighs almost three pounds and has a bright and sharp 14-inch touch screen that could be a tad brighter for outdoor use. The keyboard is adequate, with a little bit of mushiness when you strike the keys and not as much travel as Lenovo’s top-of-the-line ThinkPad laptops.
There are two USB-C ports and a headphone jack, but nothing else, so don’t forget your dongles. The screen can fold back to turn the Flex 5G into a (very heavy) tablet. And for its price, some of the specs—only 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage—are underwhelming.
There is one additional Flex 5G feature that sets it apart from competitors, and is both a big benefit and a big downside. The processor in this Windows laptop isn’t made by Intel or AMD. It’s a Qualcomm chip based on designs from ARM, meaning it has more in common with smartphone processors than typical PC chips.
The big benefit is battery life—insane battery life. I worked all day on the Flex 5G, running numerous speed tests, downloading lots of files, and generally pressing it to the limit. At the end of the day, the battery was still more than half full. Lenovo claims 26 hours of battery life, and I believe it. That’s a tremendous advantage for people working away from the office, as we almost all are right now, and on business trips, which almost none of us are on.
But with this amazing power comes a great limitation. Like Microsoft’s Surface X tablet, the Flex 5G cannot run all regular Windows apps. Microsoft has made sure all of its apps run fine. And every web app that I tried, from Slack to Gmail to WordPress, also worked as expected. But if you want to run Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Designer, or many other popular Windows desktop productivity apps, you’re out of luck. Major video games also don’t run on ARM chips yet. Microsoft has a website that details some of the challenges and potential fixes for Windows apps on ARM devices.
Still, more app developers have been making their apps compatible. Cisco’s AnyConnect VPN app, a native Dropbox add-on, and some other business apps that were the subject of user complaints last year related to ARM devices are now available in Microsoft’s app store for the Flex 5G, and they install just fine.
The problem with the Flex 5G, despite its light weight and incredible battery life, is that it can only grab 5G service in limited locations right now. And users may have trouble trying to use apps that aren’t compatible.
In this case, it may pay to wait for 5G service to become more ubiquitous and for more Windows ARM apps to become available before switching to the Flex 5G.
Dell and HP also have 5G laptops coming soon, and it may pay to wait and see how they compare with the Flex 5G (particularly the HP model, which is supposed to run on a more typical Intel chip).
But no matter the limitations today, the future is becoming increasingly clear. If you are doing business on your laptop, or playing highly detailed online games, you are going to get a huge boost from having a 5G connection sooner or later.


fortune--2020-07-08--Health care executives fear public distrust of COVID-19 vaccine will lead to continued spread of dis

Health care executives fear public distrust of COVID-19 vaccine will lead to continued spread of disease

The health care industry is optimistic that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be developed within the next year, but they’re worried that public distrust is so high it won’t be effectively implemented.
Researchers are currently developing more than 145 vaccines around the world to prevent COVID-19 infections. More than 20 of them are already in human trials with the hope that something could be available to the general public by early 2021. But a vaccine isn’t worth anything if no one takes it.
A panel of health care industry insiders speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health Virtual conference on Wednesday expressed concern that public trust in vaccinations has eroded to the point where people will refuse the shot.
“I’m not seeing an improvement in public trust,” said Michael Neidorff, the chairman, president, and CEO of Centene, a health insurance company reporting $75 billion in revenue last year.
The problems associated with getting people to wear masks, which is a much simpler solution than visiting a health care professional and receiving a shot, is prologue to what we’ll see when it comes to getting people vaccinated, he explained.
Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president and chief patent officer at pharmaceutical giant Merck agreed that there would be challenges ahead. “Trust isn’t going to come from the top down, especially in this political environment,” she said.
Even the name of President Donald Trump’s vaccination-hastening project, Operation Warp Speed may sow distrust said Gerberding. “From the standpoint of Merck, we need to be crystal clear that we’re not sacrificing safety for speed,” she said. The term ‘warp speed’ may seem incongruous with safety, so it’s up to professionals to prove that they’re not taking shortcuts.
The pair addressed how to use community-level tools to ensure that when vaccinations are available, Americans receive them. They agreed that it begins with local physicians and trusted members of communities assuaging any worries or doubts.
“People don’t understand the safety of vaccines. We’re going to need to work with physicians and locals to set examples,” said Neidorff. It’s important to launch grass-root efforts as soon as possible to get ahead of any problems and begin explaining the importance of vaccinations, added Gerberding.
Both Neidorff and Gerberding said that they hope lessons learned about the quick development and distribution of vaccines could be applied to future pandemics, which they warned will increase in frequency.
“This isn’t necessarily the worst pandemic we’re going to face. I think this is a new chapter of history where we’re going to have to accept these events,” said Gerberding. “This isn’t the last war and we need to commit to serious health security.”


fortune--2020-07-08--5 key things Facebook must improve, according to civil rights audit

Facebook failed to protect users from discrimination and hate, according to an audit the social network commissioned to review its track record on civil rights.
“Many in the civil rights community have become disheartened, frustrated, and angry after years of engagement where they implored the company to do more to advance equality and fight discrimination, while also safeguarding free expression,” the report said.
The audit, made public on Wednesday, was conducted by Laura W. Murphy, president of Laura Murphy & Associates and former director of the ACLU’s legislative office, and Megan Cacace, partner at civil rights law firm Relman Colfax. It’s the third such annual audit of Facebook, the first of which was in 2018.
In a blog post, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg responded to the audit by saying, “We have made real progress over the years, but this work is never finished, and we know what a big responsibility Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content.”
The report comes as hundreds of companies, including well-known brands like Verizon, Starbucks, and Levi Strauss, participate in a one-month boycott of advertising on Facebook. The campaign, called #StopHateForProfit, aims to pressure the company to do more to eliminate hate on its service.
In response to pressure, Facebook has prohibited posts intended to reduce voter turnout and promised to add 30% more people of color, including 30% more Black people, to its leadership ranks. It also plans to invest $100 million in Black-owned small businesses.
But the audit also revealed where Facebook falls short. Here are five examples:
Voter suppression and fact-checks
The audit’s authors critiqued the company’s “troubling” enforcement of its rules related to voter suppression and decisions against fact-checking politicians. The report pointed to a series of posts by President Trump, who described state-issued mail-in ballots as illegal and “gave false information about how to obtain a ballot.” The auditors said they “vehemently expressed their views” to Facebook, but were not given the chance to speak with the company’s leaders until after they had already decided to do nothing.
“Facebook’s recent decisions on posts by President Trump indicate a tremendous setback for all of the policies that attempt to ban voter suppression on Facebook,” the report said.
The auditors also raised a red flag about Facebook’s policy against fact-checking posts by politicians and leaving their posts untouched after they violate the service’s rules. “These political speech exemptions constitute significant steps backward,” the report said.
Civil rights must be prioritized
The auditors criticized Facebook for a lack of civil rights expertise, especially in functions related to elections, hate speech, and ads. They recommended that Facebook not only add a civil rights leader to its ranks but also create a team to improve its internal processes. This would allow civil rights experts to potentially pause new products and policies if they find problems.
Resources are needed to address hate and organized hate
Facebook should do more to crack down on hate against minority groups including Muslims and Jews, the auditors said. They recommended that the company collect more data about which groups are targeted so it can create better policies that target specific types of violations. The auditors also want Facebook to gather more information about how long it takes to remove prohibited content and whether the response time varies by the group targeted.
White nationalist bans don’t go far enough
Last year, Facebook prohibited white nationalism and white separatism on its service. But the auditors said that policy only applies to explicit references and should go further.
Last year, the auditors had praised the then-new white nationalism ban but suggested it was “too narrow” because it only prohibited posts that use the specific phrases “white nationalism” and “white separatism.” Since then, the auditors complained, “Facebook has not made that policy change.”
Instead, Facebook has taken a different approach, including assigning a team to work exclusively on combating dangerous individuals and organizations. As part of that effort, the company banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations, the report said. Still, civil rights groups are concerned that Facebook’s success in detecting and removing hateful content is inadequate.
Algorithmic bias and discrimination must be addressed
The auditors voiced concerns about Facebook’s algorithms, which control what users see in their News Feed, including that they may inadvertently fuel extreme and polarizing content or promote bias. The report outlines a need for concrete actions to address these issues.
Facebook should require that all internal teams building algorithms follow best practices, and that existing algorithms and machine-learning models should be tested against that guide, the report said. Auditors also recommended that Facebook require new employees to be trained to reduce bias and discrimination in artificial intelligence.
“Facebook needs to approach these issues with a greater sense of urgency,” the report said.


fortune--2020-07-08--Johnson & Johnson CEO says a COVID-19 vaccine is only ‘part of the puzzle’

Even as Johnson & Johnson pushes toward its goal of producing a billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2021, CEO Alex Gorsky warned on Wednesday that it would not be enough to return society to the status quo.
“There can be some mythology that the moment we have a vaccine, life is going to go back to normal—that we can do a high-five and go back to the way we always lived,” he said at Fortune Brainstorm Health Virtual conference on Wednesday. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case.”
Gorsky said that in a positive scenario where there are several vaccine candidates at the beginning of 2021, the right education and distribution systems would still need to be in place to deliver a vaccine. He called the efforts underway to do in five to seven months what normally takes five to seven years “a moonshot” and “unprecedented.”
“The world has never attempted something quite that large or quite that complex,” he said. “That’s why I think a vaccine, while a very critical element to bringing an end to this pandemic, is part of the puzzle.” Therapeutics, hospital system protocols, mask wearing at certain times, good hygiene, and social distancing are all still going to be necessary, he said. “It’s going to take a combination of all of those things to ultimately bring an end to this virus,” he added.
Gorsky said the company recently selected a final candidate for its vaccine and plans to do clinical testing in the coming weeks so that it can produce hundreds of millions of doses in the next several quarters, and billions by the end of 2021.
Johnson & Johnson is pursuing the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis, but Gorsky did not dismiss the need for some companies to benefit financially from their efforts. That more than 200 companies are working on very novel approaches to a vaccine on an aggressive timeline is “only possible because of the tremendous amount of research and development and investment that has gone into the biopharmaceutical world over the last several decades,” he said. He added that “maintaining an environment where there is a reward for innovation is critical.”
Gorsky said that he has never seen the level of partnership, collaboration, and sharing of information and data that he’s seeing today between companies, government entities, and NGOs.
“Hopefully some of the lessons we’re learning now between these different entities can be the kind of collaborations we continue in the future,” he said. “That could be one of the silver linings in the long term that the industry and health care systems take away.”


fortune--2020-07-08--How Apple and Stanford are speeding up medical discoveries

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the extent to which technology and medicine often move at vastly different speeds, sometimes complicating contact tracing, vaccine development, and telehealth.
But on Wednesday, health leaders at Apple and Stanford University School of Medicine celebrated some of the ways in which they have learned to work together productively—and to speed up the academic medical process without losing its scientific rigor.
“A really important part of the work we do is really thinking about: What is the science that we’re bringing to bear, and is it grounded in evidence? And then how do we take that and make it usable?,” said Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, during a panel discussion at Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Health event.
In November, Stanford researchers published the results of their Apple Heart Study in the New England Journal of Medicine, finding that wearable devices (like Apple Watches) could detect irregular heart beats. The clinical study, which was funded by Apple, enrolled more than 419,000 participants over eight months—a large and remarkably fast accomplishment for a clinical trial, and “far beyond what we anticipated,” Desai said.
Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford University School of Medicine, agreed that large tech companies’ ability to scale rapidly has led to a partnership that’s “certainly been beneficial to those of us in academic medicine.”
“Enrolling over 400,000 people in an entirely virtual clinical trial over the course of eight months—I mean, who would have thought that was possible?” he added. “It yielded some very valuable results.”
There are still some large areas of medicine that remain relatively untouched by the latest technology, including the United States’ complicated and unwieldy electronic health records system. Though Apple got into the EHR arena in 2018, Minor pointed out that the most commonly used EHR systems today are “legacy systems based on 1970s architecture.”
“We still transmit records by fax machines in health care today,” he said, adding that Apple’s EHR efforts are “very empowering for all of us, and it’s a start. But we still have a long way to go to really make electronic health records interoperable, and to make them serve the needs of our patients and health care providers.”


fortune--2020-07-08--What accessing preventive health care should look like after the pandemic

What should the new phase of accessing health care look like?
The COVID-19 pandemic has only highlighted longtime disparities and problems with accessing health care—from underserved communities to racial inequities. But while health care providers work on treating current public health issues, “there is a desire for us to move our attention upstream to protecting, preserving, and promoting health and wellness,” said Dr. Michelle Williams, dean of the faculty at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, during Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Health conference on Wednesday.
For those like Williams, the key to giving the health consumer greater access to care needs to be thought of more holistically. “Health is more than the absence of disease, health is really about wellness and a capacity to thrive,” she explained. In that sense, the “new front door to health and wellness” needs to focus on delaying the need for health care “as long as we can and put our investments more toward protecting [and] preserving” a healthy life as long as possible, according to Williams.
Crucial in that push is the role of information technology in health care, and for individuals to not only have access to, but own, data about one’s health. In this new phase, Williams said that “people would have the trust and confidence that their data are available for making the right clinical decisions and are owned by the patient, the population, so they can also use that information to manage their own health and wellness.”
Using that information technology to improve and optimize health care is key: “If individuals who had chronic disease, hypertension or diabetes, knew their numbers [if their blood sugars were too high] and if they were empowered to join the health care professionals in caring for their own health…they would be empowered to make healthful decisions for themselves and for their families,” she said. That includes enabling individuals to gain access to a healthier diet of fruits and vegetables and less-processed foods.
But having all the information is only one piece of the puzzle: Access to the kinds of healthy “micro-steps,” as Williams calls them, is another story.
Bringing preventive health and wellness to the masses also has to take into account the access these communities have. “We are having people in a community where we’re telling them, ‘Eat well, eat healthfully,’ but in that community, there is not a ready access of those foods,” Williams said. The problem of communities living in so-called food deserts, where access to healthy food is limited (and which tend to occur more often in majority Black communities), has only come further into the forefront in recent months.
“We have to get the message and the opportunity to engage in the healthful behavior aligned,” Williams said. “That is going to require multiple sectors working together.”
Changing long-standing behaviors will likely take a village. While making “small, positive, health-forward decisions” is crucial for individuals, Williams suggests people need to be “surrounded in an ecosystem that is also health-forward” for those changes to take hold. “That ecosystem can be a family, can be the community, can be the workplace, [and] it can also be the policies that we write and implement as a nation,” she said.
But with only around 2.5% of health dollars budgeted for public health, a realignment of investment back into communities will be important in helping individuals make and sustain these healthy behaviors.
Nipping diseases in the bud (and encouraging healthy lifestyles in communities) could have a major net effect, she says: “We would have a healthier overall population that staves off so much of the morbidity and premature mortality that is attributable to preventable causes.”


fortune--2020-07-08--Sophie Grégoire Trudeau talks resilience and connection in the time of isolation

The coronavirus has infected more than 11 million people globally, but the virus’s impact on mental health has been felt by the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have been forced into isolation to stop its deadly spread.
The mental health impact of the pandemic is a form of collective trauma, says Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, a women’s and mental health advocate, mother of three, and wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Grégoire Trudeau recently launched a podcast, WE Well-being, to discuss mental issues and dispel the continuing stigma around them.
In conversation with Arianna Huffington at Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Health conference, Grégoire Trudeau—who contracted and recovered from COVID-19 in March—spoke about her own struggles with an eating disorder and the resilience of the human mind to adapt and overcome its traumas through connection with other people.
“We’re all one trauma away from one another. One life event happens, one traumatic thing happens, you don’t know where you could find yourself the next day. And look at what’s happening now. We’re all in one very similar trauma—experiencing this virus, this pandemic,” said Grégoire Trudeau. “So we have to adapt to this situation and use our creativity to connect with one another and tell our own stories. We’re all connected through our traumas.”
Speaking about her own self-care regimen these days, Grégoire Trudeau said she’s careful about her media and social media diet: “We become what we consume…Why is it that we can’t put our screens away for 10 minutes to be in silence? When we slow down, we gain perspective.” She said she practices meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, being in nature, and exercise to “recalibrate her internal self.”
Grégoire Trudeau said she’s inspired by how the pandemic has been a trigger for empathy and creativity, and ended the conference on an optimistic note: “Having studied empathy and development in babies, we tend to be happy. Our true nature is to be loved and understood for who we are. And we want to express freely our own creative selves. And in situations of fear and stress and anger and divide, I think human goodness is being triggered and ignited.”


fortune--2020-07-08--The fastest mobile network in the U.S. right now

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
The latest measure of America’s mobile networks shows consumers are enjoying faster download speeds on their smartphones and tablets, despite increased usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. But consumers trying to upload their own videos and other content actually suffered from slower performance according to data collected by testing firm Ookla, which makes the popular Speedtest app.
In a new report covering the second quarter of 2020, Ookla said the average download speed on U.S. mobile networks reached 44.9 megabits per second in June, 28% faster than the same period in 2019. That’s fast enough to download an episode of the Netflix series The Politician in less than a minute. Upload speeds lagged behind and got slightly slower however, averaging just 9.7 Mbps, marking a 3% decrease from last year.
AT&T had the fastest average speed nationwide of 41.2 Mbps; followed by T-Mobile with 33.7 Mbps; and Sprint, which was just acquired by T-Mobile, at 31.5 Mbps. Verizon came in fourth at 30.8 Mbps. The average score includes a combination of both upload and download speeds and excludes areas with too few tests and tests taken on older phones. AT&T has come out first for the past six quarters.
This year’s test also included a separate score for superfast 5G service. However, the carriers are using different strategies, which resulted in wildly divergent speeds and availability.
Verizon, which is rolling out the fastest form of 5G but only in limited areas, had the highest average speed of 870 Mbps, but was available in parts of only 39 out 5,164 cities and towns with some 5G service. AT&T averaged 78.7 Mbps in 237 places, and T-Mobile averaged 64.3 Mbps in 5,013 areas.
Ookla said it calculated the average speeds by combining the results of millions of Speedtest app results from 1.6 million mobile users. That’s quite different from RootMetrics, a testing firm that employs professional testers who drive around the country and measure network performance. In January, RootMetrics ranked Verizon as the speediest wireless network.


fortune--2020-07-08--Why companies must take a stand on racism and social issues, according to a Fortune 500 CEO

In a departure from the historical norm, under which companies abstained from commenting on socio-political issues lest they alienate consumers, corporations spoke out one after the other against racism, and in some cases against police brutality, following the death of George Floyd in May.
They did so in part out of necessity, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told the audience during Fortune‘s virtual Brainstorm Health conference on Wednesday.
“Frankly, society is calling on us to actually stand up, take positions and be more vocal than we were in the past,” said Robbins. “So I don’t think we have a choice.”
Robbins put out what was perhaps among the most visceral of corporate statements after Floyd, a Black man, died when a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The CEO called the incident “maddening” and “truly abhorrent.” Citigroup chief financial officer Mark Mason—among Wall Street’s highest-ranking black executives—published a blog post that repeated Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” 10 times.
Since then, other companies have been criticized for not taking more forceful stances. Social media company Facebook has dealt with protests from employees and boycotts from advertisers after it decided not to take action against a series of controversial posts from President Trump, including one whose language echoed racist rhetoric from the 1960s.
“I think that the business community stepping into issues like police reform and focusing on our Black communities,” Robbins said Wednesday. “The CEOs, particularly the ones that I engage with in the U.S., are super involved in these social issues. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever have to make hard decisions. It just means you have to have consideration for all your stakeholders.”


fortune--2020-07-08--Coinbase hires prominent former judge as its top lawyer

The cryptocurrency giant Coinbase announced on Wednesday that it has brought on Paul Grewal as its chief legal officer. The move is significant because Grewal is a prominent figure in Silicon Valley and carries a lot of weight in a legal circles.
A former patent lawyer, Grewal worked as a U.S. Magistrate judge for six years, and presided over high profile cases between Apple and Samsung, and Google and Oracle. In 2016, he left the bench—an unusual move given the prestige and job security of a federal judgeship—to join Facebook.
At Coinbase, Grewal will preside over the company’s global legal operations. The task will not be an easy one given the messy legal and regulatory environment surrounding cryptocurrency—an environment that has seen Coinbase mired in IRS investigations and class action lawsuits.
Grewal doesn’t have a background in cryptocurrency, but Coinbase appears to believe his familiarity with complicated tech issues will make him suitable for the job.
“Paul will also lead the team’s continuing work to partner with financial services regulators, contribute to the development and rollout of innovative, regulated products and services, and support the company’s global growth and regulatory strategy,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
Grewal replaces Brian Brooks as Chief Legal Officer. Brooks was a senior executive at Fannie Mae who joined Coinbase in 2018 but then left in May to become acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—the country’s top banking regulator.
Grewal’s hires also comes as Coinbase and other cryptocurrency companies push to make inroads in Washington, DC, where they hope greater influence will win the crypto industry more forgiving regulatory conditions.


fortune--2020-07-08--Are wearables like Fitbit a key to earlier detection of COVID-19?

Since the onset of the pandemic, Amy McDonough has dropped her commute to Fitbit’s San Francisco headquarters and repurposed that time for exercise. And as the SVP and general manager of FitbitHealth, she’s seeing in real-time how millions of global Fitbit users are doing the same.
“We are getting less steps. We are moving less throughout the day, but our amount of purposeful activity [exercise] is actually going up. And what that is resulting in is statistically significant decreases in things like resting heart rate,” McDonough told attendees of Fortune’s digital Brainstorm Health conference on Wednesday.
And not only are Americans exercising more, McDonough says, but based on data collected from its more than 30 million users, many people are also getting increased rest and more consistency in their sleep. Those are both key for maintaining strong immune systems, she added.
The billions of data points that wearables like Fitbit and Apple Watch collect can do a lot more than simply tell us how we’re spending our time during the pandemic. McDonough told Fortune‘s virtual Brainstorm Health attendees that the data could even be used to influence health care, and perhaps even help detect COVID-19 earlier.
“Based on some earlier work we did with Scripps Research Institute, they published some data in The Lancet that was looking at [Fitbit] data that was able to take heart health metrics and look at those and then be able to look at early detection of the flu,” McDonough said.
Now Fitbit is launching a clinical trial to look at heart variability and respirations rates, and how those can be early indicators of illnesses, like COVID-19, she said.
“We have a lot to learn about COVID-19, but being able to understand asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic are really important pieces. And the earlier we can catch the illness, the safer we can leave communities and business and education,” McDonough said. “What wearables do is help make what was previously invisible, visible.”


fortune--2020-07-08--Why messy data is a big problem in the fight against COVID-19

One of the biggest problems facing the health care industry and the fight against the coronavirus pandemic is dirty and messy data.
Eric Lefkofsky, CEO of health care technology company Tempus, discussed health care’s data dilemma on Wednesday during Fortune’s Brainstorm Health online conference.
Researchers are hopeful about using machine learning techniques to analyze medical data like patient records, which could help doctors better treat patients by knowing how they’ll likely respond to certain therapies. However, health care data can be disorganized, making it difficult for data-crunching technologies to analyze it.
“There are so many brilliant minds surrounding health care, but they have, for whatever reason, chosen to not clean out their data warehouse,” Lefkofsky said about the problem of “dirty” data.
He equated cleaning health care data to “mowing lawns,” in that it’s “not necessarily difficult, you just have to get out there and do the work.”
Lefkofsky also said that many firms working to find treatments for COVID-19 are still reluctant to share data with others for reasons including data privacy rules. He didn’t mention it, but competition between researchers also likely plays a role.
“The first thing that’s really super troubling is even in the midst of a global pandemic, it is hard to get people to truly break down these data silos and contribute data,” Lefkofsky said.


fortune--2020-07-08--ABC is reviving ‘The Wonder Years,’ focusing on a Black family in Alabama

ABC is rebooting “The Wonder Years,” a beloved coming-of-age sitcom about the U.S. middle class, only this time it will tell the story of a Black family in Alabama.
“Empire” co-creator Lee Daniels is executive producing the project, alongside Fred Savage, the star of the original series, which debuted in 1988. Neal Marlens, who co-created “The Wonder Years,” will serve as a consultant.
Fred Savage and Lee Daniels will executive produce the rebooted “The Wonder Years” on ABC. Astrid Stawiarz—Getty Images;Monica Schipper—Getty Images
ABC has only committed to produce a pilot of the show, which means it may never get on the air. But ABC and its owner Walt Disney Co. have made telling more Black stories a priority following the killing of George Floyd, which brought a wave of protests about racial injustice.
Hollywood has long struggled to produce shows that represent the diversity of America. ABC was once the home to both Kenya Barris and Shonda Rhimes, two of the most prominent Black writers in TV, but both have since signed deals with Netflix Inc.
Disney also announced an overall production deal with football player and civil-rights activist Colin Kaepernick earlier this week.
”The Wonder Years,” which ran until 1993, originally depicted Kevin Arnold, a young boy in what was presented as a typical American family dealing with the tribulations of the late 1960s and early 1970s.


fortune--2020-07-08--Mayor London Breed accepts the first Bernard J. Tyson Memorial Leadership Award

Bernard J. Tyson, the late CEO and chairman of health care provider Kaiser Permanente, was a mentor to San Francisco Mayor London Breed. Now, Breed is the first recipient of Fortune’s Bernard J. Tyson Memorial Leadership Award.
Fortune created the award in honor of Tyson, a longtime advocate for expanding health care access who died in November at age 60.
Denise Bradley-Tyson presented Breed with the award in honor of her late husband during Fortune’s Brainstorm Health virtual conference on Wednesday.
“Bernard was an incredible leader in advancing public health solutions that were both equitable and helped our most vulnerable populations,” Breed said in her acceptance speech. “We have made significant progress in making real changes in our public health system, but the coronavirus pandemic has shown us just how important this work is.”
Breed was chosen as the award’s first recipient for her swift action to protect public health this year as she locked down San Francisco early in the coronavirus pandemic. “Like Bernard, she has dedicated much attention to not only physical well-being, but also mental well-being,” Bradley-Tyson said while presenting the award. “She has prioritized mental health assistance—offering much-needed help to those who are homeless, addicted to drugs, or suffering from mental health issues.”
Breed reflected on Tyson’s leadership in her acceptance speech. “Bernard worked so hard to provide health, wellness, and nutrition resources to many of our vulnerable and low-income communities where health disparities are more significant,” she said. “He knew that to create healthy communities, we need to ensure everyone has equal access to resources like health care, education, and most important, housing.”


fortune--2020-07-08--No, Kanye West is not running for President…yet

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Kanye West is running for President, or at least he says he is. But the rapper, producer, and fashion mogul hasn’t made anything official yet, and deadlines are quickly approaching.
Over the course of a four-hour interview with Forbes in which he called vaccines “the mark of the beast,” he admitted that he had never voted in his life and falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood was a white-supremacist plot. He also acknowledged that he hadn’t made a final decision on whether to run as an independent candidate for President.
He’ll have to decide soon, as he’s already missed the filing deadlines to be included on a number of state ballots as an independent candidate.
West said in the interview that if he doesn’t make a decision about running for office within the next 30 days, he’ll miss the majority of deadlines to file. He said he’d try to retroactively be included on ballots he missed the deadline for, citing COVID-19. “I’m speaking with experts, I’m going to speak with Jared Kushner, the White House, with Biden,” said West. But presidential candidate Joe Biden and Jared Kushner have nothing to do with state ballot deadlines and have no power to change dates.
So how will West get on ballots this November?
There’s no official or formal deadline to run for President of the United States. Instead, states have their own sets of guidelines and dates, referred to as ballot access laws.
There are three ways for Americans to become candidates for President:
Campaigning for a major party nomination typically begins years in advance. For the 2020 election, candidates had to meet primary deadlines in 2019, pay certain fees, and collect signatures.
typically begins years in advance. For the 2020 election, candidates had to meet primary deadlines in 2019, pay certain fees, and collect signatures. Independent candidates have to petition each state to be included in ballots and often have to pay a small filing fee or collect a certain number of signatures by a deadline. The first deadline for the 2020 elections was in March, but the majority of states have July and August deadlines.
have to petition each state to be included in ballots and often have to pay a small filing fee or collect a certain number of signatures by a deadline. The first deadline for the 2020 elections was in March, but the majority of states have July and August deadlines. Nearly anyone can launch a campaign to be a write-in candidate, but 33 states require potential candidates to file some paperwork ahead of the general election. Nine states don’t allow write-ins at all.
West has indicated he intends to run as an independent. Though he also said that he would “run as a Republican if Trump wasn’t there,” indicating that he may try to nab the party nomination in 2024.
So far, West has missed registration deadlines to be on the ballots of North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, and Indiana. The deadlines for Nevada, Delaware, Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Michigan are all within the next seven days and require up to 130,000 signatures and fees to be paid. Considering that West said his campaign currently consists of his wife, Kim Kardashian West, and Elon Musk, it seems like getting on the ballots in those states within the next week will be a difficult task to complete.
Even West has hedged his campaign a bit. “Let’s see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it’s 2024—because God appoints the President,” he told Forbes. “If I win in 2020 then it was God’s appointment. If I win in 2024 then that was God’s appointment.”


fortune--2020-07-08--How Rwanda is beating the U.S. in the fight against the coronavirus

For many in the West, the name Rwanda may still carry memories of that country’s horrific upheavals of a quarter-century ago and tap broader Western biases against Africa. But today the country is a leading innovator on health. That includes the ongoing fight against the coronavirus: Rwanda’s efforts to control the pandemic have trounced those of ostensibly more advanced countries, including the United States.
In its first month of fighting the virus, Rwanda saw coronavirus cases grow from two to 134, according to the nonprofit Partners in Health. During the same period, Belgium—Rwanda’s former colonizer, which has a similar population—went from two cases to 7,400. By the end of June, a handful of outbreak clusters pushed Rwanda’s total reported infections to 582. New York City, with about three-quarters of Rwanda’s population and arguably one of America’s coronavirus success stories, is still seeing nearly 300 new cases each day.
According to Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s former health minister and now a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, the success comes down to a health care system focused on communities.
“Rwanda has prioritized a decentralized health care system,” she told vaccination advocate Seth Berkley at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health virtual conference on Wednesday. That has meant distributing community health workers across the country. The system, Binagwaho said, also works to get buy-in from everyone, from educators to law enforcement, to help in advancing health goals.
The U.S. stands in contrast to that approach. “[U.S.] investment in community health and public health has really been decimated in the last few decades,” said Sheila Davis, CEO of Partners in Health, which focuses on expanding medical services for the world’s poorest people. “So we don’t have the benefits of a community health system like they have in Rwanda.”
One outcome that may be particularly frustrating to some Americans is Rwandans’ deep trust in their health care system and health authorities. According to a 2019 report, Rwandans have the world’s highest level of trust in clinics and hospitals, and place high importance on vaccinations. The U.S., meanwhile, has been a hotbed of distrust and denialism toward precautions as basic as cloth masks.
Most of all, Davis faulted U.S. reliance on hospitals as a focal point of health care, in contrast to Rwanda’s approach of putting health workers closer to the communities they serve. That has included providing what Davis called “aggressive testing” during the pandemic, and setting up facilities to let possible coronavirus carriers isolate away from their families, including providing food for quarantiners.
Though Rwanda has gotten some attention for its use of drones and other technology in the pandemic, Davis thinks that’s secondary. “The innovation is not a technology. It’s more the innovation of human caring and providing social support.”
Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.


fortune--2020-07-08--For Van Jones, a focus on health is key to leadership

For Van Jones, this was the year that forced him to take a look at his own health—and see that prioritizing his well-being could be a leadership trait.
Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference on Tuesday, the CEO of REFORM Alliance said he realized during the pandemic that his hypertension and prediabetes could make him a “tasty snack” for COVID-19, and he decided to start taking better care of himself.
It was a decision that drew “ferocious” blowback on Twitter, he added, with some followers seeing his announcement as a way of letting racist systems that restrict Black access to healthy food and health care systems off the hook.
But Jones said he saw it differently—it was a way to help him keep fighting.
“The old model was, you know the future, you know all the variables, and you just come up with a plan, and you execute that plan, and that’s leadership,” he said. “Well, what was your plan in January 2020, and how’d that work out for you? This is the year that demonstrates being prepared to pivot, being prepared, knowing who you are, being centered in your values, being healthy, being clear, and then being able to deal with the changes that come, is a much better leadership model, I think.”
When it comes to leadership, the importance of mental—not just physical—health is now becoming much more clear, added David Hoke, senior director of health and well-being at Walmart, who spoke on a panel alongside Jones.
“I don’t think you can do one without the other,” Hoke said. “And what’s becoming clear now with COVID, with the racial injustice that’s now been more exposed, that the infrastructure to address that is frankly piss-poor everywhere around the world.”
Encouraging leaders to take their mental health seriously, he said, now means having conversations with those same leaders telling them that it’s okay to be vulnerable—and pushing back against a particularly American ethos of toughness, where you can’t show weakness or you fail.
“The idea that [that ethos] is going to get us through the world we’re living in now just isn’t going to work, because it’s just fundamentally not true,” Hoke said.
Discussions about the impact of both structural racism following the killing of George Floyd and a widespread health crisis now provide the chance to break down barriers, said Jones.
“For the first time you’re having both conversations: a conversation about the need for structural change and the need for behavioral change,” he said. “Both are the logical lessons coming out of the first half of 2020. We’ve got to deal with sick people and sick systems. We’ve got to deal with structures and behaviors, and the good news, as this conversation here shows, is everybody knows what you’re talking about—because we’ve all had a common reference point called the first half of 2020.”
Plus, he added, “we’ve still got the second half to go!”


fortune--2020-07-08--Twitter shares rise amid speculation about subscription service

Twitter Inc. shares rose as much as 12% Wednesday amid speculation that the social media company is building a paid subscription-based service.
Twitter is considering alternative revenue streams, including some kind of subscription offering, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans. A new group called Gryphon is still being assembled, and it’s possible that a subscription product never launches, the person added, asking not to be named discussing information that is not yet public.
The company recently posted a job listing announcing Gryphon, described as “building a subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future.” The new group of web engineers will work closely with the payments team and the Twitter.com group, according to the posting. News of the announcement prompted speculation on Twitter.
The stock rose the most intraday in more than three months, to $36.98. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.
The idea of a Twitter subscription product has been discussed for years as an alternative to the company’s current advertising and data-driven businesses. Former Chief Operating Officer Anthony Noto said in 2017 that Twitter was considering charging for enhanced features inside Tweetdeck, the Twitter product for power users, though that never materialized. More than 84% of Twitter revenue comes from advertising, a business that was growing before the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. Adding a subscription service could help it diversify. In the first quarter, Twitter’s sales rose just 3%, the smallest increase in more than two years.
Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey is also under pressure from activist investors to accelerate the company’s business, and it’s possible a subscription service that includes special features for the most frequent users could provide more revenue at a time when advertising budgets are pulling back.
Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, said Twitter is “highly unlikely” to consider paid subscription tiers for its service. Instead, there could be a subscription tier “for data and analytics that its power users may consider.” The initial total market may be fewer than 10 million users, he said.
Simply charging for Twitter’s core product was always seen as a potential bottleneck to user growth, which is important for a company that makes most of its money from advertising.
“We do believe that there is a real importance that Twitter is accessible to everyone in the world no matter what their economic stature is and where they are in life, so the general case has been to make Twitter free and open,” Noto said in 2017.
Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been asked about offering a paid version of the social network over the years, but has argued that the platform should be free in order to reach the most people.
–With assistance from Michael Tobin.


fortune--2020-07-08--Fortune bestows leadership award on Vaccine Alliance CEO Seth Berkley

Since its founding 20 years ago, the public-private partnership group Gavi, also known as the Vaccine Alliance, has helped vaccinate more than 760 million children across the developing world. By the organization’s count, the immunizations have prevented more than 13 million needless deaths.
Fortune honored Dr. Seth Berkley, Gavi’s CEO since 2011, with a leadership award at its Brainstorm Health virtual conference on Wednesday. In bestowing the award, Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf described Gavi as “arguably the most productive multilateral health collaboration in history.”
“Seth is, in every sense of the word, a lifesaver—a physician and epidemiologist who has devoted decades to protecting children across the planet from diseases old and new,” Leaf said.
Before taking the helm at Gavi, Berkley founded and led the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, IAVI, another nonprofit organization, in 1996. His work helped ensure that safe and affordable HIV vaccines are in the process of being developed and will be distributed to vulnerable populations around the world.
More recently, throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Gavi has been contributing medical supplies to frontline workers and supporting testing initiatives. The organization plans to help globally distribute a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is developed.
In accepting the award, Berkley said Gavi intended to make sure any potential COVID vaccine is “equitably distributed to everyone.”
“Countries are scrambling now to try to get vaccines, and that’s not an efficient way to do it. We’re going to end up in a deadly zero sum game,” he said.
“We’re not safe unless everyone is safe,” Berkley added.
Gavi, based in Geneva and backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, recently raised $8.8 billion to continue its mission. “There has been no greater champion for vaccinating the most vulnerable among us than Gavi,” Leaf said.