fortune--2020-03-19--Filmmakers must make a choice as coronavirus forces festivals online

This article is part of a Fortune Special Report: Business in the Coronavirus Economy—a look at the impact of the pandemic on more than 50 industries.
Noah Hutton can’t afford to wait. He worked commercial jobs for years and put thousands of his own dollars into Lapsis, his first narrative feature film, with the additional help of outside investors. From the moment he started writing the script, it’s been a three-year journey leading up to the world premiere at a major film festival, Austin’s South by Southwest, which was set to take place this March.
But then the coronavirus pandemic prompted the cancellation of SXSW, along with numerous other festivals and industry events. So Hutton, like many of the affected filmmakers and artists banking on festivals for distribution and financial opportunities, had to make a choice: opt in to an online viewing platform, or wait months, or even a year, to screen the film in person.
As with jobs, education, social activities, and countless other facets of daily life under quarantines and social distancing, film festivals are going digital, giving directors the option of showcasing their work online to a virtual jury for awards that can be a standout résumé achievement in the eyes of press and film buyers. Some festivals are additionally exploring ways for planned attendees to engage with filmmakers through virtual Q&As or panels.
“It’s not the idea of moving everything, but maybe short films, one or two features that we’d share links with, and opportunities to do some kind of interactive or prerecorded engagement with filmmakers behind the camera,” says Gregg Schwenk, CEO and executive director of the Newport Beach Film Festival, which was rescheduled from its annual April dates to a week in August because of the coronavirus.
Schwenk says he and his staff are in currently in discussion with filmmakers about what an online festival could look like. “It’s something where we want to be respectful to our filmmakers and the audience, but also have an opportunity to maybe preview and engage some of our filmmakers before our rescheduled dates.”
A glimpse of downtown Austin in the heart of the entertainment district on March 9. As SXSW and other film festivals have been canceled amid the pandemic, filmmakers have been forced to make choices about how to give their films exposure. Gary Miller—Getty Images
In SXSW and Hutton’s case, there are no rescheduled dates several months from now. This year’s edition is outright canceled, with SXSW cofounder and chief executive Roland Swenson saying he is “not entirely sure” how the popular festival will return in 2021. For now, organizers are taking a two-pronged digital approach for its selected films. The festival’s juries will have access to private screening links and will give out awards on March 24. Additionally, filmmakers can participate in a secure online viewing platform called Shift72, which enables them to make their movies available for “press, buyers, industry, or combinations of these audiences.”
For Hutton, the choice was clear: join SXSW’s online platform and avoid the possibility of a crowded film festival landscape in the fall. New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival was postponed indefinitely owing to the coronavirus, while the Cannes Film Festival in France—one of world’s largest markets for film distribution deals—was drawing up contingency plans for online screenings prior to its official postponement Thursday.
“I worry that by holding on to our film,” says Hutton, “we’re going to be entering a situation in the fall with not only the normal pace of thousands of projects being submitted to elite festivals, but additionally the films that were already programmed now pulling all of their connections, trying to get the spot they feel they deserved and had been awarded by programmers of festivals of equal stature.”
He says he doesn’t have the luxury of delaying until next year with so much time, effort, and money already spent, and with investors expecting a return in dividends. “I’m not in the position where I could just wait around and hope for a year, to find other work and make enough income,” he explains. “The decision made itself for me. I would like to sell the film.”
In a coronavirus-afflicted, virtual world, that requires some nuanced strategies. On SXSW’s Shift72 platform, rather than making Lapsis available for screening via each of the “press, buyers, or industry” options, Hutton is choosing to court the press alone. The plan is to drum up reviews and coverage and approach selected distributors from there.
“If it’s out there and open to any distributor, it feels like we have less control and are a little more exposed,” he says. “We don’t want to open this up to get offers from all these distributors and say, ‘Thanks for the offer, but we have to wait to make a decision.’ We’re approaching the top distributors.”
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He says that in uncertain times full of theater closures and social distancing, a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon would be the preferred landing spot.
For other festivals and filmmakers, however, the in-person, communal experience of a theater audience is either too hard to replicate, or an experience worth waiting for.
The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, the annual event screening films from and about the Indian diaspora, postponed its April festival indefinitely because of the virus. “We discussed [an online screening system for a virtual film festival] but decided against it due to some real roadblocks and the fact that it is not the type of experience we want to offer our filmmakers, audience, supporters and patrons, staff and volunteers,” Christina Marouda, IFFLA’s chair of the board, said in a statement.
Pi Ware, director of the documentary Skin Deep: The Battle Over Morgellons, was set for a world premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival next week—until the event was canceled because of the pandemic. The film’s screening was specifically targeted at the festival’s location—home of a large medical community and the renowned Cleveland Clinic. Even if an online festival was put in place (festival organizers did not respond to requests for comment), the point was to reach those attendees in person. Now, the film will go straight to video on demand on March 31.
Other filmmakers are simply willing to keep waiting. Eric Bricker, director of the documentary Alumination, will pass on any online opportunities at the Newport Beach Film Festival and screen at the rescheduled August event—should it happen.
“The one thing about filmmaking is it’s really an endurance race,” Bricker says. “Alumination took me six years to make, and in those six years there’s been a lot of waiting—waiting for edit, rough cut, the next phase. So I’m accustomed to waiting. I have so much time and capital in this project. I don’t want to deny myself this experience, and [premiering online] wouldn’t do full justice to the film.”
He concedes, however, that permanent silver linings may emerge from the necessity to host film festivals online.
As does Schwenk. “As technology advances, as broadband and 5G capability permeate throughout society, I think it will become more commonplace and accepted,” he says. “The idea that you could be listening to someone talking via screen versus seeing them in person—what you might be seeing is actually an enhancement.”
But for now? “The show must go on. It’s true for every festival,” Schwenk says. “We’re all sitting here—each festival has this collective experience. We’ve gotten so far. We can’t just stop.”
Update, March 19, 2020: This story now includes the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Harvey Weinstein’s sentencing could change the entertainment industry
—As coronavirus spreads, is this weekend’s historically low box office Hollywood’s new normal?
—Don Cheadle on Black Monday, Wall Street in the Trump era, and hope about the climate change fight
—How Netflix’s Lost Girls upends the conventions of serial killer movies
—Diao Yinan discusses The Wild Goose Lake, his Chinese motorcycle noir
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fortune--2020-03-19--We need to take bold action to contain coronavirus, say Harvard experts

Trump outbid governors on coronavirus supplies after telling them to buy their own

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What should the public sector be doing to address the coronavirus? What should governments be doing? How can we anticipate the problems still to come?
The Kennedy School of Government has put together a compelling list of short essays from experts in their community, designed to help frame the extent of the problems coronavirus is causing and explore ideas that might work and actions to be taken immediately.
Much of it affirms what we are already coming to terms with.
Get used to feeling that your life is disrupted, says Juliette Kayyem, the former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration. “[W]e have quickly moved from the containment phase to the mitigation one,” she says. It’s time to keep your distance and get over it. “It is the nature of a pandemic that has no ‘start’ moment, so the right timing is always a guesstimate—too late, and you miss your window; too soon, and you may interrupt unnecessarily. But this is the new normal. Disruption is the plan.”
“Who would have thought that new norms about hand washing would become a crucial global governance issue?” notes Professor Kathryn Sikkink, whose work studies international norms and the impact of human rights laws. “And yet this appears to be the single most important action individuals can take.”
Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and public finance expert, calls for a complete re-prioritization of the U.S. budget. “We can’t depend on the trickle-down of federal ‘emergency’ dollars to states and local governments, which can take months or years,” she says. “We must take advantage of historically low interest rates to spend money on health care and economic survival.”
Click through for more specific ideas about health care delivery and rapid system change.
Longtime raceAhead readers will be delighted to find Nadja West in the mix, the 44th Surgeon General of the U.S Army and former commanding general of the Army’s Medical Command, now a Hauser Fellow at the Kennedy School.
Her leadership philosophy became clear during my interview with her at the 2018 Most Powerful Women Summit, which started with a pre-social distancing hug (sigh). Her operational expertise, as a person formerly responsible for transforming how the military delivers health care, is understanding how systems and technologies impact people within a health care ecosystem.
But her human expertise speaks directly to the heart of the matter: “If we can train empathy, we can make almost any change happen.”
In her Harvard piece, she refers back to “the boring basics” of leadership—lead by example, communicate early and often, and trust your teams to do their work. But transparency is key. “Be truthful and consistent and provide honest assessments. This will reduce confusion, distrust and panic while increasing compliance,” she writes. Information flow, whether the news is good or bad, is what matters.
She suggests that if you’re in a position to communicate about the coronavirus and its many implications, it’s time to reign in any self-dealing, injustice collecting or petty politics
Put another way, it’s time to put away childish things, however they manifest for you.
“Toxic leadership is never appropriate,” she says. “[A]n oppressive environment during a public health emergency can lead to fear, mistrust, hiding of issues or concerns, and adverse outcomes.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
Schoolwork-from-home is going to be harder for some kids than others Kids from lower-income households are already having connectivity problems at home, which is going to put them at a major disadvantage as classes and assignments move to online-only. According to data from Pew Research, some 35% of households with children ages 6 to 17 and with an annual income below $30,000 a year do not have a high-speed internet connection at home. And one-in-five teens from low-income households say they lack the resources, like a computer, to do school work from home.
Pew Research
Stores create special hours for coronavirus-vulnerable shoppers It’s a thoughtful and smart move. Stores like grocery chains, Target, and Walmart, are opening their doors exclusively to older and other at-risk populations first thing in the morning before the general population and after the premises are deep cleaned overnight. Find a partial list below, contact stores in your area for their plans.
Fortune
Broadsheet readers have tips If you’re working at home with children, Broadsheet readers have some ideas on how to cope with the new normal. Plan and schedule everything, for starters. “I’ve even mapped out all of my soon-to-be 5-year-old’s snacks each day and am packing his lunch at night. Anything to eliminate decision-making during the day so my brain can focus as much as possible on work," one reader suggests. Another popular one is to turn kids into interns—an opportunity for colleagues to enjoy the occasional kid sighting on the Zoom machine.
Fortune
Youth sports coaches have tips Seasons and long-awaited tournaments are being cancelled. While the crowd-bans are tough on the fans of the pros, for student-athletes, the abrupt end to their seasons can be particularly painful. The non-profit Positive Coaching Alliance has some tips for parents, coaches, and administrators. First, make it a leadership lesson. “The sacrifices they will make during this crisis ask them to draw on the very lessons they've learned through sports: to be resilient, have a growth mindset and become leaders in and out of sports,” they say. Then, find creative ways to keep student-athletes engaged—like scheduling an online hangout in lieu of regular practice, to report on individual workout progress, and to share training and motivation tips.
Positive Coaching Alliance
On Background
Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer Chuck Reece, the editor behind The Bitter Southerner, a literary treasure that explores the complex legacy of the American South, begins this tribute to the civil rights icon with a confession. He was well into middle age before he knew who she was. He grew up watching the civil rights movement on television, and had working familiarity with Martin Luther King, Jr. “But we were blind to the historical context of all that conflict we saw every night on TV, because we were schooled in the old United Daughters of the Confederacy curriculum.” He took a couple of Civil War history courses, but never read Georgia’s 1861 declaration of secession from the U.S. When he heard Hamer’s name invoked at the opening of a civil rights museum, he felt embarrassed to find that he had never heard of her. He has now.
The Bitter Southerner
We weren’t ready for a pandemic Three months before the pandemic drove us into isolation, the U.S. Naval War College and the National Center for Disaster Medicine & Public Health began a war-game simulation they called Urban Outbreak. The goal, a researcher and game designer told Fortune’s Clifton Leaf, was to simulate how a population would deal with “a profoundly dangerous and complex problem set”—in this case, the sudden arrival of a deadly pathogen in a fictional city called Olympia. The Olympians weren’t ready, and neither were we.
Fortune
How studying ethnography can help you be less biased This post from Mandy Jenkins, a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, really focuses on journalism, and how it can better define objectivity and defeat dreaded both-siderism. But it’s really about how to be a better, less biased observer, which is something that requires “the empathetic methods of design thinking and the analysis of the social sciences.” Ethnography is the study of people and cultures, which is also what journalists, marketers, salespeople, product designers, justice professionals, policymakers and a whole host of other people do without framing it that way. To that end, power dynamics are key. “One element of reflexivity is understanding how the presence of a researcher—or, in this case, a journalist—changes the environment,” she writes.
Medium
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the ‘Kung-Flu’ to my face. Makes me wonder what they’re calling it behind my back.”
—CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang tweeted on Tuesday.


fortune--2020-03-19--Coronavirus’s unexpected silver lining is revealed in Italy

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If there’s something positive to be found in Italy’s emergency coronavirus orders to lock down 60 million residents, it might reveal itself in a sunset or while peering down at the waterways.
After just a few weeks of shutting down huge portions of the economy, the country’s environmental health already appears to be making a roaring comeback—at a heavy cost, of course.
Measured in lives, the COVID-19 outbreak has had a devastating impact on the country. As of Wednesday’s report from Italian health officials, the outbreak had killed nearly 3,000 with total cases nearing 36,000. In both measures, only China has recorded more.
A decree from Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte shut down schools, restaurants, bars, tourist sites, offices, cinemas, or any other place where crowds may gather in close proximity. That measure, now being followed in part in other European countries, is ravaging Italy’s economy, which could contract by as much as 15% this year. Social norms have changed, too, as typically social Italians are told to stay far away from one another.
But the environment? It’s doing just fine.
The impact of a big reduction in vehicle traffic and industrial activity across the economically vibrant northern swath of the country is evident in European Space Agency satellite photos comparing January with March.
Pollution levels in #Italy in January, before the #coronavirus lockdown, and in March, with the #lockdown in full force. This also illustrates how much of Italy's economy is in the north, plus two small blips for #Rome and #Naples. Images from @ESA. #coronavirusItaly #Pollution pic.twitter.com/3S51JW6YvT — Eric J. Lyman 🇺🇸🇩🇴🇮🇹 (@EricJLyman) March 17, 2020
Also known as the bel paese, or “beautiful country,” Italy has a vexing air-quality problem, particularly in the industrial Po Valley region where the coronavirus outbreak is at its worst. In recent years, Italians have been ordered to leave their polluting, diesel-powered cars at home on various days as smog levels exceeded health standards. Car traffic these days is at a fraction of what it once was as people have been largely confined to their homes.
Meanwhile, a near shutdown of cruise- and cargo-ship traffic around Italy’s canal city of Venice has resulted in fish returning to the Venice lagoon and canals for the first time in decades.
Italian media credits cleaner air and a lack of foot traffic for a bloom in springtime flowers carpeting Rome’s urban parks, with patches of wild flowers growing to a size normally seen in May.
Wild flowers carpet a park adjacent to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. Original photography: Bernhard Warner
There are similar reports from Hubei province in China, where the coronavirus outbreak began, and from other parts of the world where lockdowns have been in place for more than a few days. One report estimated that China’s greenhouse gas emissions over the past month are as much as a quarter below normal levels.
While analysts may cheer the numbers, the way we arrived at them is not at all good news—even from an environmental perspective.
“In a very short span of time we are seeing positive developments that we would welcome under other circumstances,” Christiana Figueres, the UN’s top climate change official until 2016 and the coauthor of a new book on environmental priorities, told Fortune. “But this is not how we want to reach those goals. On their own, these are short-term improvements at best.”
Something similar happened during the 2008–09 global financial crisis when growth in worldwide greenhouse emissions fell by half. It shot back up again when the economy returned to full output.
According to David Turnbull, strategic communications director for Oil Change International, one way to make sure some of these kinds of short-term environmental benefits get locked in is for policymakers to ensure that any economic stimulus packages tied to the coronavirus pandemic stress sustainable development.
“The coronavirus is the biggest problem facing the world today, but before the outbreak, the biggest problem was climate change. And after the outbreak goes away, it will again be climate change,” Turnbull said. “But the desire to face down both problems can come together. Governments should show they can walk and chew gum at the same time by making sure that the trillions of dollars being injected into economies are done in a way that will keep greenhouse gas emissions lower and promote sustainable growth.”
So far, it seems the opposite may be happening. On Thursday, European Commission officials were reportedly operating under the idea that the coronavirus pandemic is forcing them to “reorder priorities,” meaning that key environmental reforms like biodiversity strategies and anti–food waste measures will likely be put on the back burner.
That would be a missed opportunity, says Figueres.
“Environmental and anti-coronavirus priorities should be one set of priorities,” she said. “There’s no need to pick between them.”
Andrea Minutolo, head of the research division for the Italian environmental lobby group Legambiente, said the national shutdown in Italy is probably a net-positive from a strictly environmental perspective. But it’s not clear-cut.
“Some of what we have seen is seasonal. And while there is less traffic and less industrial activity because of the lockdown, there is also more home energy use as people stay indoors,” Minutolo told Fortune. “The only way we will get everything pointing in the same direction is to set up the right rules and incentives. That is what the world should be doing as we emerge from this crisis.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to prepare your personal finances for a coronavirus recession
—The Fed made a bold move to calm shaky markets. But is it enough?
—Why return CEOs are usually bad news for a company’s stock
—Dormant PayPal Credit accounts are coming back to hurt credit scores
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: What’s causing the looming recession
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fortune--2020-03-19--Fortune poll: 63% of Americans worry they won’t be able to pay their bills during the coronavirus cr

Fortune poll: 63% of Americans worry they won’t be able to pay their bills during the coronavirus crisis

The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. is growing at a rapid pace, and the fallout is spilling over into everyday life in a way not seen in generations.
To get a sense of how the coronavirus outbreak and its economic shocks are impacting households, Fortune and SurveyMonkey polled over 2,900 Americans between March 16 to 17. We performed a similar survey between March 9 to 10—and now we can see how opinions have changed in just one week.
The numbers to know
82%
… of Americans say a recession is likely in the next year, compared with 65% who shared that opinion last week. That number is 91% among Democrats and 75% among Republicans.
63%
… of Americans are worried they won’t have enough money to pay their normal monthly bills.
64%
… of Americans say the coronavirus outbreak is disrupting their household spending levels. Just over half (51%) are spending less on eating out, while 53% are spending more on groceries.
69%
… of Americans are worried that they or a relative will be exposed to the coronavirus. That number was 50% last week.
A few deeper takeaways
1. Americans are ramping up spending on groceries and household items.
The shock caused by the coronavirus outbreak has Americans shifting how they’re spending their money. As panicked buyers rush to stock up, the Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll finds around half of Americans are spending more on groceries (53%) and household essentials (40%).
Meanwhile, many Americans are spending less on eating out (51%), travel (38%), entertainment (33%), and transportation (22%). These decreases in spending are likely to result in layoffs or cut hours in those industries.
2. Republicans’ opinions on the economy have shifted the most over the past week.
Americans across the board became more concerned that a recession is likely in the next year. But no group saw a bigger swing than Republicans. Last week, 47% said a recession is likely. This week, 75%. This shift comes during the same period that Donald Trump is calling for stimulus packages and government relief for some industries.
3. Modest-income households are hit hardest by the coronavirus fallout.
Financial stress isn’t hitting evenly across America: A total of four in five households with incomes under $50,000 aren’t sure they’ll be able to pay all their upcoming bills. That compares with just two in five households with incomes over $100,000 who are in a similar situation. Many well-paid white-collar workers are being allowed to work from home, while employees of bars, restaurants, and the tourism industry are seeing layoffs or cut hours.
Among all respondents, 63% say they aren’t sure they’ll be able to pay all their upcoming bills, although the federal government has halted student loan interest payments, and state governments like New York have frozen mortgage payments. That has doubled from last year: In an April 2019 Gallup poll with the same wording, 36% of Americans said they weren’t sure about it.
*Methodology: The Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll was conducted among a national sample of 2,960 adults in the U.S. between March 9–10. This survey’s modeled error estimate is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The findings have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography.
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fortune--2020-03-19--The Coronavirus Economy: How my job as a bar manager has changed so far

Fortune spoke with Chris Filan for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, to ask about how COVID-19 has affected his employment status and his plans for the future, and to get a sense of how he has been handling this news, both emotionally and financially.
By all rights, Tuesday should have been one of Chris Filan’s busiest nights of the year.
In November 2019, Filan opened House of Brews West Ashley, a beer bar and retailer in the Charleston, S.C., suburb. Despite the seasonal challenges of competing with holiday spending and the traditional January lull, the gathering spot has found a loyal audience. Last Saturday was its busiest day ever.
But on Monday, the Charleston City Council limited public gatherings at restaurants and bars to 50 people or less. That followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the White House issuing strong guidance to limit gatherings to 50, and then to 10 people, respectively, and many other states ordering restaurants and bars to close because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Now, Filan worries that House of Brews’ strong start might not be enough—even with the arrival of St. Patrick’s Day, typically one of the highest-traffic days for any bar.
“For me, it is, at this point, how long can I sustain before they shut me down?” he says. “How much money can we make here in order to keep the doors open further down the road? I feel like I’m walking a tightrope right now. I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Filan, the store’s managing partner, and assistant manager Cayla LaCosta are the sole employees of House of Brews West Ashley. (Her dogs, Mrs. Maisel and Twiggy, are unpaid goodwill ambassadors.) The store has a sister location on the Mount Pleasant side of town, but it operates independently.
Business, initially, hadn’t been dramatically impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, says Filan. But that was before things changed on Sunday, when Gov. Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency and shut down state schools. Now it’s a lot more uncertain.
Cayla LaCosta and Chris Filan of Charleston’s House of Brews West Ashley (with store mascot Mrs. Maisel) balance running a new business and handling a pandemic. Chris Morris
House of Brews is a bit different than some other beer bars. While it offers a number of craft and local beers on tap, it has a much more extensive selection of cans and bottles, allowing the business to offer a wide array of choices. To keep revenue flowing, the company announced Sunday it would begin offering pickup service, letting people phone in orders for a six-pack or mixed pack and grab them without mingling with others.
“My business is more community driven,” says Filan. “I’m a bar that sits in a very high-traffic neighborhood area, surrounded by a lot of neighborhoods, which really helps in a situation like this. If people want to go out and buy a six-pack and take it to their house, I do offer that. If it comes down to it, we will just offer pickup service.”
He’d be willing to deliver beer, he says, though South Carolina law prohibits that—and even with the pandemic-related shutdowns, that’s unlikely to change.
A 20-year veteran of the Charleston food and beverage industry, Filan has worked through plenty of hurricane scares. And that experience is helping him guide House of Brews through the current environment. (“I am very versed in the art of ordering conservatively,” he says.)
House of Brews is as much a neighborhood gathering spot as it is a bar. It has a wide, open backyard area, and patrons frequently bring their children and dogs along with them. Filan, who classifies himself as a germaphobe, says he and LaCosta have increased the store’s precautions, wiping down door handles, sinks, and surfaces even more regularly. And a container of disinfectant wipes sits on the bar counter these days.
House of Brews West Ashley has quickly become a favorite neighborhood gathering place. Chris Morris
So far, coronavirus concerns for the business haven’t really impacted Filan’s life beyond the bar. He’s single and doesn’t have kids, he says, so he was already hyperfocused on the business in his off-hours.
“I just have to throw another aspect onto that,” he says. “I have to wake up, check Twitter, and see what has been going on and see if they’re shutting me down.”
Filan’s concern, he says, is that Charlestonians regularly face down crises, such as the near-annual hurricane evacuations, so they tend to be blasé about warnings sometimes—even when they’re serious. That could be problematic this time around.
“This has always been a social town,” Filan says. “Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are going to treat this like they do hurricanes. It’s going to be a free-for-all. They’re going to have places open, and they’re going to do what they want.”
Making matters more complicated is the arrival of spring, when the entire city longs to be outside, and people often have a tax refund burning a hole in their pocket.
“If you’re a restaurant or a bar that has an outdoor porch or patio, you can’t print money fast enough,” Filan says.
Should city or state officials order restaurants and bars closed, though, and should House of Brews be able to ride out that outage, Filan says he has high hopes for the business that will come once life begins to return to normal.
“People are going to go stir-crazy,” he says. “There’s going to be a lot of cabin fever. If there’s a red light, then as soon as that light turns green, there’s going to be a drag race. People are going to want to get out again.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to get a refund on your Broadway tickets after coronavirus shut down
—The oil sector takes its next hit: Coronavirus on offshore rigs
—Some of the most extreme ways companies are combating coronavirus
—How luxury designers in Italy’s fashion heartland are facing coronavirus
—Amazon tells employees to work from home if they can. Warehouse workers can’t
—Why Dollar General thinks coronavirus can help business
—Coronavirus may not be all bad for tech. Consider the “stay at home” stocks
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-19--Do you really have to avoid ibuprofen because of coronavirus?

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.
There’s a debate raging about, of all things, ibuprofen.
Let’s back up for a second. The controversy started when France’s health minister sent out an eyebrow-raising tweet over the weekend warning against the use of NSAIDs (the class of drugs that includes ibuprofen).
“Serious adverse events related to the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been reported in patients with COVID-19, possible or confirmed cases,” reads an alert on the French government’s website. Patients should instead use acetaminophen, the active ingredient in drugs like Tylenol, per the health minister.
But that ostensible link between COVID-19 and serious side effects hasn’t actually been proven. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), essentially Europe’s version of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), released a statement Wednesday saying, “There is currently no scientific evidence establishing a link between ibuprofen and worsening of COVID‑19.”
The World Health Organization (WHO), which some reports had suggested was backing France’s stance on ibuprofen for COVID-19, also doesn’t see any immediate evidence to support the claim. “At present, based on currently available information, WHO does not recommend against the use of ibuprofen,” the global health agency wrote in a tweet Wednesday.
Both the EMA and the WHO said they would be monitoring the situation but had yet to hear widespread reports from physicians saying that ibuprofen caused serious side effects in COVID-19 patients beyond those that are already associated with the painkiller.
It’s possible we’ll see some sort of unique effect down the line—this is, after all, a new virus. But for now, this appears to be an overblown concern.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Can an app tell you if you've been near someone with coronavirus? Researchers from MIT and Harvard, with an assist from Facebook and Uber engineers, have developed an open source app called Private Kit: Safe Paths that would use location tracking to inform you whether or not you've been near or in contact with someone who has a (self-reported) COVID-19 case. It sounds a bit dystopian, but the app's creators say that it would use encrypted location data, rely on users to self-report cases, and not identify exactly who has a self-reported case near you, just that someone does. (MIT Technology Review)
INDICATIONS
Bristol-Myers' Juno teams up with Oxford Biomedica for cancer CAR-T work. Bristol-Myers Squibb came to own Juno, the cancer drug specialist, via its acquisition of Celgene, which itself had bought Juno in a $9 billion deal. Juno focuses on cell therapies such as CAR-T in order to fight cancers by re-engineering patients' own immune cells to become cancer killers. That requires some complex manufacturing capacity, including the ability to use viral vectors in the re-engineering process. To that end, Juno has struck a partnership with Oxford Biomedica to use its viral vector platform and spur new types of CAR-T treatments. (PharmaTimes)
THE BIG PICTURE
How the coronavirus sticks to surfaces. A new study finds that the coronavirus can linger on certain surfaces for up to 72 hours. While the bulk of the virus would be gone in a far shorter period of time (it varies depending on the surface, with it lingering to plastic for the longest time), it could still persist in some form for days—hence public health officials' warnings to try and avoid touching public surfaces that haven't been sanitized. (NEJM)
Being young doesn't inoculate you. A new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analysis finds that, yes, even the young can die or get severely ill with COVID-19. While being elderly or sick significantly ups your risk factor, about 29% of reported case in the U.S. to date have occurred in people who are 20 to 44 years old. While the mortality rate was significantly lower among this cohort, it wasn't non-existent. (CDC)
REQUIRED READING
6 steps to sustainably flatten the coronavirus curve, by Rich Lesser
South Korea amassed the world's most comprehensive coronavirus data. Here's what we've learned, by Grady McGregor
With the markets in turmoil, the ECB readies a bond-buying bazooka, by Geoffrey Smith
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fortune--2020-03-19--Gabbard ends long-shot 2020 bid after disruptive candidacy

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is suspending her presidential campaign, ending a long-shot effort that saw her feuding with Hillary Clinton and raising fears among Democrats that she would mount a third-party 2020 bid.
She’s offering her full support to former Vice President Joe Biden. She made the announcement by email on Thursday.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What the world’s biggest economies are doing to fight coronavirus and recession
—Will donors of color invest in white presidential candidates?
—Big business rallies behind Joe Biden
—How swing state economies have performed since the 2016 election
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: What happens to leftover campaign funds once a candidate drops out?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-03-19--Playboy was on the brink of shuttering its print edition. Coronavirus pushed it over the edge

Playboy magazine, which blazed a path for the sexual revolution, is shutting down its print publication—and it’s blaming coronavirus as part of the reason.
While a general slowdown in print magazine sales is the primary cause, the company said content production and supply-chain issues surrounding the pandemic sped up the decision. Playboy will transition to a digital-only product after the next issue, though it does plan to produce print one-off publications in 2021.
“Last week, as the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic to content production and the supply chain became clearer and clearer, we were forced to accelerate a conversation we’ve been having internally,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy Enterprises, in a Medium post. “With all of this in mind, we have decided that our Spring 2020 Issue, which arrives on U.S. newsstands and as a digital download this week, will be our final printed publication.”
Playboy published its first magazine in 1953, immediately capturing people’s attention with nude photos of Marilyn Monroe. At its peak, in the early 1970s, it sold more than 7 million copies in a single month.
But the rise of the Internet and competitors who did not hesitate to print much more graphic pictures took a toll on the company. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017, sold the company to a private equity firm in 2011 and transferred ownership of the iconic Playboy Mansion. He died with very little money to his name. His family sold their remaining shares in the company in 2018. The magazine went quarterly at the beginning of 2019.
The company’s biggest asset these days is its trademark. The well-known bunny logo is available on a wide range of consumer goods, and it’s lucrative. Kohn said Playboy drives “over $3 billion in annual consumer spend worldwide.”
The company has been growing its social media presence, and digital video subscriptions are up 30% year over year.
“Over the past 66 years, we’ve become far more than a magazine,” said Kohn. “And sometimes you have to let go of the past to make room for the future. So we’re turning our attention to achieving our mission in the most effective and impactful way we can: to help create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to prepare your personal finances for a coronavirus recession
—The coronavirus could upend America’s business relationships with China
—10 questions about the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic, answered
—3 months before the coronavirus, a war game showed we weren’t ready
—How hackers are exploiting the coronavirus—and how to protect yourself
—The coronavirus pandemic could mark a huge shift for the fitness industry
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The race is on to create a coronavirus antiviral drug and vaccine
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-19--Uber’s CEO to investors: The coronavirus won’t kill our business

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.
Uber is trying to reassure investors that it will survive the slowdown of its ride-hailing business despite the global spread of the coronavirus, which is keeping more of its customers at home.
“Our balance sheet is incredibly strong,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during an analyst briefing on Thursday. “We have plenty of liquidity on the books, which we think positions us to come out of this crisis—and we will come out of this crisis—strong, capable, and important.”
The ride-hailing company is “extensively” stress-testing its business models across a few scenarios, and all signs point to Uber surviving the slowdown, Khosrowshahi said. The company currently has $10 billion in unrestricted cash. In the worst-case scenario, the rides business drops 80% for the year without any recovery and still leaves Uber with $4 billion in cash with access to a $2 billion revolving line of credit. The company has also frozen hiring and said in two weeks it will have pulled back a total of $150 million in incentives and marketing.
Khosrowshahi did not provide an update on the company’s guidance but said he doesn’t expect the slowdown to change the margins of each of its services. Last month, he said the company expected to be profitable, excluding certain expenses, by the end of 2020. Uber’s stock was up about 30% trading at $19.38 per share following Thursday’s announcement.
The news comes as major companies, especially in the travel and transportation industry, prepare for major losses to their businesses. It also follows mounting pressure from Uber investors, who want to see the company finally turn a profit—Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019. Meanwhile, the timeline of when business across the world will return to normal is still unclear.
Regardless, Khosrowshahi said the company is looking at its business through the lens of what has happened in Hong Kong, where demand for rides started improving after two months, and what’s happening in Seattle, one of the first U.S. cities to shut down nonessential business. Khosrowshahi said as Hong Kong, which is ahead of the U.S. in terms of progress with the virus, comes back online, people will first start going back to work, and then slowly begin “tiptoeing” back into their social lives.
“When the demand is there, the supply is going to be there instantly, because our driver partners need to work,” Khosrowshahi said. “When work turns on, Uber turns on.”
Uber said its strength comes from its cost structure—without demand for rides, Uber also has less costs—and from Uber Eats, which is giving drivers an opportunity to work and the company another revenue stream.
In Seattle, one of the hardest-hit cities in the states, the Uber Eats business is still growing. The company’s restaurant sign-ups increased 10-fold on its self-service website. Uber also has been aggressively cross-promoting its Uber riders to use its food delivery service, which has created “huge spikes” in the business over the past couple of a days.
“My job is to ensure the business is sound in any scenario,” Khosrowshahi said. “But, of course, the last few weeks have been anything but predictable.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Inside Xerox’s audacious quest to buy much bigger rival HP
—How A.I. is aiding the coronavirus fight
—How early GPS gadget-maker Garmin mapped out success against Big Tech
—Dormant PayPal Credit accounts are coming back to hurt credit scores
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro vs. the Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-19--What is Apple without its events? A new iPad—and era, perhaps—arrives via press release

For about as long as Apple has been a company, events have been core to its business. Steve Jobs, its founder, had a preternatural ability to engross, entertain, and sell from the stage. His keynote addresses were worthy of P.T. Barnum, the master showman himself. They were legendary, so much so that Apple fanatics had a name for them: Stevenotes.
Through the Tim Cook era, Apple’s events have continued to be a central part of the company’s culture and marketing strategy, even if they have lost some of that inimitable Jobsian luster. They build hype, fuel rumors, entice fans, and offer the tech giant a stage upon which to present its meticulously manufactured image—and products—to the world, all on its own terms.
Wednesday’s surprise announcement of a new iPad Pro and Macbook Air suddenly prompts the question: What is Apple without the Apple event?
As the coronavirus pandemic lights up the globe, organizers have been scuttling conferences left and right, Apple seemingly included. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona—nixed. Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference—switched to a live-stream and local events. Google I/O—online-only.
But for Apple, the changeup is particularly noteworthy. Instead of hosting a March event, as Apple sporadically has over the past decade, the company unveiled its latest products…in a press release. Not quite as flashy as a hushed theater where onlookers are held in the grip of executives’ carefully honed overtures.
This isn’t the first time Apple has announced product updates solely by press release, of course. But it is rather unusual for a major iPad update, like the new iPad Pro. (Not unprecedented, however; and last year the company unveiled its AirPods Pro and second-generation AirPods this way.) Still, it’s more common for varieties of Mac computer to get the press release treatment.
A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment about whether Apple ever intended to host a March event.
The March event isn’t the only apparent change on the docket. Like Google, Apple said it plans to move its upcoming developer event, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), to a purely virtual form. It is the first time in 31 years, since the program’s inception, that Apple will take that approach. “We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, in a statement. The online confab will be a “learning experience,” he said.
Can Apple replicate the magic of its events online? In some ways, it already has. Far more people tune in to the company’s events via live-stream than squeeze into the Steve Jobs Theater at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But there is still a live audience in the frame, and Apple manages, somehow, to convey that bubbling frisson, that electricity-in-the-room, to those outside.
Compared with the other coronavirus-induced disruptions Apple is facing, the event interruptions and press releases may seem like small potatoes. Supply chain issues in China, the disease outbreak’s epicenter, have greatly affected production for products like the iPhone. And Apple has recently closed its retail stores all around the world, so far reopening locations only in Greater China.
Given events’ significance to Apple, it’s worth considering the potential implications, even if they are unclear. “WWDC is a big part of how Apple generates enthusiasm in the developer community, and that is indirectly tied to how robust the App Store is,” says Jeff Kvaal, an analyst who covers Apple at Nomura Instinet, a Wall Street research outfit. “It is relevant, and I’m sure Apple would rather do it than not do it, for many reasons. But the challenge we have as financial analysts is, it’s not immediately clear how we might tie that to Apple’s services business over the September quarter,” he notes, referring to the impact on software-related sales.
Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist for Canva, a design tooling startup, reminisced about his time at Apple, marketing the Macintosh computer in the ’80s, and he suggests to Fortune that it might be time for a new approach.
“In the good old days, it would be Steve Jobs and standing ovations and throngs of believers, and worshippers would fall to the ground in amazement,” Kawasaki says of Apple’s events. “We can wistfully remember those days, but those days are gone.” It’s going take a new kind of way to introduce products, given the exigencies of the pandemic and other major societal changes underway, he adds.
“Many companies will realize, ‘Why are we renting these spaces and buying hundreds of bottles of wine and thousands of pounds of shrimp and cheese and prosciutto and grapes?’ We should just go digital all the time,” Kawasaki continues. “We may look back and say this was a turning point for climate change, when people realized they didn’t have to go fly someplace.”
The pandemic may accelerate businesses coming up with alternatives to the Big Show. But, then again, nothing quite captures that in-person magic of a Stevenote.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Inside Xerox’s audacious quest to buy much bigger rival HP
—How A.I. is aiding the coronavirus fight
—How early GPS gadget-maker Garmin mapped out success against Big Tech
—Dormant PayPal Credit accounts are coming back to hurt credit scores
—WATCH: Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro vs. the Sony WF-1000XM3
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-19--Hong Kong launches massive surveillance operation to track suspected coronavirus patients

Hong Kong is undertaking a major surveillance operation to keep tabs on the thousands of passengers arriving at its borders amid fears that travelers will unleash a new wave of coronavirus cases.
Starting Thursday, the local government enforced a mandatory 14-day quarantine followed by two weeks of medical surveillance for all arrivals coming into the Special Administrative Region (SAR). The government is also aiming to slap tracking bracelets on all entrants to ensure no one breaks containment.
“If we do not impose tougher measures at this stage, our previous efforts to prevent the disease from spreading throughout these two months could be completely wasted,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday.
Until recently Hong Kong had kept its infection rate relatively stable, with just 141 as of Sunday. That number jumped to 208 by Thursday, however, with at least 50 of the previous 57 cases reportedly returning from overseas.
Travel band
Hong Kong has used wristband trackers before, issuing at least 30 of them in February. However, supplies were too low. According to a press release from the Hong Kong government, it has placed over 50,000 people under home quarantine since early February, most without wristbands, since it initially only had 500 of the devices.
The original wristbands didn’t contain GPS chips and so weren’t technically location trackers. Instead, they monitored the wearer’s proximity to a base station, which was a smartphone that had been modified to only work when plugged into the wall.
The bracelet paired with the smartphone via Bluetooth, and if the phone was turned off, the bracelet was removed, or the wearer ventured too far from the phone, the Department of Health got an alert. Under Hong Kong law, people who violate quarantine can be subject to a $640 fine or a six-month prison sentence.
However, the new wristbands strapped on the limbs of arrivals are different. The latest model contains a QR code that the wearer scans using a smartphone app. The tracker then uses “communication signals” to ensure the wearer remains within the confines of his or her home.
Explaining the new device to reporters on Wednesday, Hong Kong chief information officer Victor Lam said the bracelets do not capture the wearer’s precise location but rather a change in location.
Lam also said that the wristband’s rollout had been made in consultation with the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data—an independent statutory body established to enforce Hong Kong’s rules on privacy.
The government has ordered 60,000 of the monitoring devices, but currently has a first batch of only 5,000. It appears wristband supply will be a problem almost immediately; airport arrivals have dropped off significantly because of the virus, but nearly 13,000 passengers still landed in Hong Kong on Wednesday, according to Hong Kong’s Immigration Department.
Checking in
Hong Kong is not the only place to impose tracking measures on arrivals. In Thailand, arrivals from “at risk” countries are being provided with SIM cards so that they can download a government-mandated app that monitors their location. Israel has approved emergency measures to track suspected cases.
South Korea is reportedly developing a system to retroactively verify where confirmed coronavirus patients have been, by combing surveillance footage, credit card transactions, and other data to paint a picture of the patient’s movements.
Seoul, which successfully beat back the country’s first wave of the coronavirus, encourages quarantined individuals to download an app for tracking and communication purposes, too. The government says the app isn’t mandatory, but the alternative is receiving unscheduled phone calls to your home.
Hong Kong is likewise warning that health officials will conduct “surprise video calls” with quarantined people to ensure they are where they should be.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to prepare your personal finances for a coronavirus recession
—The coronavirus could upend America’s business relationships with China
—10 questions about the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic, answered
—3 months before the coronavirus, a war game showed we weren’t ready
—How hackers are exploiting the coronavirus—and how to protect yourself
—The coronavirus pandemic could mark a huge shift for the fitness industry
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: The race is on to create a coronavirus antiviral drug and vaccine
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-19--The great African air conditioning boom is about to begin—and it could strain the planet

This article is part of a Fortune Special Report: Business Faces the Climate Crisis.
Gwilla Nkurlu is a busy man. As the owner and managing director of Climate Air, an air conditioning company based in Dar es Salaam, he spends his weeks traversing Tanzania. His 35-person company, founded five years ago, manages cooling systems for some of the abundant supply of new skyscrapers, hotels, embassies, and data centers across the country.
“Almost everyone has [air conditioning],” he said, speaking on a 93°F January day from the city of Arusha. “It’s pretty hot.”
Tanzania’s major cities—like others across Africa—are sitting at the apex of two profound transformations: rapid urbanization and climate change.
“This is basically the largest urbanization that human history will have ever seen,” says Laura Cozzi, chief energy modeler at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, and a coauthor of a 2019 report on Africa’s energy outlook. About 40% of Africa’s population of around 1.3 billion are currently living in cities. That’s about 520 million people—a number that has jumped by about 90% over the past two decades. In the next two decades, the urban population is expected to more than double, adding an additional 580 million people.
Meanwhile, says Cozzi, “On the continent of Africa, temperatures are changing more than anywhere else.”
The result? More work for Nkurlu, as cooling demand skyrockets.
Electricity demand for air conditioning is set to increase 10-fold by 2040 across Africa, according to IEA forecasts. That demand rises still higher when you factor in the need for other forms of cooling power, to manage food supply chains and medicine.
The demand boom is starting from a relatively low base. On average, about three households in every 50 continent-wide currently own an air conditioning unit, while more than half have an electric fan. Still, modernization and urbanization over the next two decades is likely to equate to tens of millions of new AC units—fueled first and foremost by rising demand from those who can already afford it. And the fossil-fuel energy required to power many of those units could exacerbate the problems associated with a warming planet.
Cities are hot, in every sense
Africa’s big cities will be hit particularly hard by both trends. Temperatures are typically 3°C to 5°C higher in high-density neighborhoods than in lower-density neighborhoods, according to the IEA. Africa currently has three megacities—defined as hosting 10 million people or more. By 2040, there are expected to be at least eight. Dar es Salaam is expected to reach megacity status by 2035.
If the demand is there, however, the challenge will be in meeting it. Half the continent’s population currently lacks basic access to electricity and, for the millions who have it, it comes at a steep cost. Lack of capacity, unreliable networks, and spates of drought that have hit hydropower capacity mean Africans generally have the most expensive electricity in the world relative to their average incomes.
Relying on diesel generators to plug the gaps—as many in Dar es Salaam still do—is like “putting Chanel No. 5 in your car,” says Cozzi.
A solar power farm in Garissa, Kenya. Environmentalists hope that such installations can help meet Africa’s fast-rising power demand. Xie Han—Xinhua/Getty Images
Higher efficiency standards for air conditioners and sinking prices for renewable energy—in particular, solar—offer the best chance to fill the gap, says Cozzi. But it will take both public and private investment—at about quadruple the current levels—to expand and reinforce current electricity grids and create new supplies of low-carbon energy, including vast solar parks.
Some people aren’t waiting. In Tanzania, Nkurlu is working on a project to power air conditioning with solar panels. He aims to start this fall.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Plastic that travels 8,000 miles: the global crisis in recycling
—5 charts projecting the cost of climate change by 2100
—Wall Street is starting to put pressure on the fossil fuel industry
—Business is finally starting to reckon with climate change
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: PSEG CEO on climate change action: “It should have been done yesterday”
Subscribe to The Loop, a weekly look at the revolutions in energy, tech, and sustainability.


fortune--2020-03-19--Movie theaters are requesting relief from Congress due to the coronavirus

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Faced with a lengthy shutdown due the coronavirus pandemic, movie theaters are requesting relief from the U.S. government.
The National Association of Theater Owners, the trade group that represents most of the industry’s cinemas, said Wednesday that it’s asking for immediate federal help for its chains and its 150,000 employees. The theaters are requesting loan guarantees for exhibitors, tax benefits for employees and funds to compensate for lost ticket sales and concessions.
The organization said the movie theater industry is “uniquely vulnerable” to the crisis, and needs assistance to weather a near total shutdown of two to three months.
“This is an unprecedented challenge to the business,” said John Fithian, president and chief executive of NATO. “We’re looking to Congress and White House to understand this is a cultural institution where people gather.”
Fithian didn’t give a specific dollar amount for what the industry is seeking but said theaters could be saved for a fraction of what the airline industry is requesting (The White House has proposed $50 billion for the airlines). For less than the cost of one airline company, Fithian said, movie theaters could be kept afloat.
“We want our policy makers to know that at the end of this thing, when people have been cooped up in their house for several months, they’ll need a break to go out and do something collectively that’s affordable and fun and away from what they’ve just been through,” he said. “But we still need to be viable.”
NATO also said it will supply $1 million in aid for out-of-work movie theater employees. The majority of the industry’s workers are paid hourly. “Starting tomorrow, most of them won’t be paid anything,” said Fithian.
Earlier this week, U.S. movie theaters closed nationwide, shuttering nearly all of the country’s cinemas including its largest chains, AMC Theaters and Regal Cinemas. The closures followed federal guidelines against gatherings of more than 10 people. Hollywood has postponed nearly all March and April releases, and many May ones, too.
In the meantime, some studios have moved their new releases to on-demand platforms, a rare breaking of the traditional 90-day theatrical window. Universal earlier announced that “The Hunt,” “Invisible Man” and “Emma” will be released for home viewing on Friday. On Wednesday, Sony Pictures said the Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller “Bloodshot,” which opened in theaters last Friday, will be available for digital purchase Tuesday.
“Sony Pictures is firmly committed to theatrical exhibition and we support windowing,” Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman said in a statement. “This is a unique and exceedingly rare circumstance where theaters have been required to close nationwide for the greater good.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How Harvey Weinstein’s sentencing could change the entertainment industry
—As coronavirus spreads, is this weekend’s historically low box office Hollywood’s new normal?
—Don Cheadle on Black Monday, Wall Street in the Trump era, and hope about the climate change fight
—How Netflix’s Lost Girls upends the conventions of serial killer movies
—Diao Yinan discusses The Wild Goose Lake, his Chinese motorcycle noir
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-03-19--Zoom is the king of social connection in this crazy, new world

If there’s one company that’s made a huge splash during the coronavirus epidemic, it’s Zoom.
In the last week, the video-conferencing software company has been the subject of several profiles in Forbes and The New York Times. Coworkers are using it for meetings, kids are hosting remote birthday parties, and students are completing their schoolwork on the platform. Someone even suggested to me that I don’t postpone my wedding in April but just live-stream it through Zoom…
And Zoom is capitalizing on this opportunity. Zoom went public last April, and since then, its shares have soared about 200%, giving it a market cap of more than $31 billion.
But when Zoom first launched, it wasn’t an obvious success story.
When the company debuted 10 years ago, the market was already crowded. There was Microsoft’s Skype, Cisco’s Webex, and Apple’s FaceTime. It seemed like there was no room for yet another player. But Zoom still took off. Why?
My colleague Michal Lev-Ram dug into this question and reached out to several investors to find out. From the story:
“Previous to Zoom, I felt like the debate around videoconference apps was ‘Which do you feel is least terrible? Let’s use that one,’” says Hunter Walk, another Silicon Valley–based seed-stage investor. (Walk did not invest in Zoom, but he is a longtime user.) “Zoom had an intersection of stable, high-quality performance plus ease-of-use, and the network effect started snowballing from there.”
Ask other avid users, and they bring up that same theme: While there were plenty of other options out there, Zoom just provided a better one.
“They built a system with a super simple, modern UX [user experience] and very few clicks to get working,” says Aileen Lee, founder of venture capital firm Cowboy Ventures (again, Lee is not an investor but a regular user of Zoom). “You’d think big tech companies with more resources would have been able to offer something as good, but they never did.”
But, Michal notes, it’s unclear yet just how many of its current influx of new users will convert to paying customers. One thing is for certain: The Zoom boom is far from over.
Read the full story here.
STARTUPS VS. CORONAVIRUS: EverlyWell, an Austin-based home diagnostics startup, announced it will offer a COVID-19 sample collection kit for home use on Monday. Founder Julia Cheek tweeted that the company will begin with a supply of 30,000 at-home kits and ramp up to 250,000 tests weekly. One kit will cost $135, which Everlywell says it sees no profit from, but Cheek is seeking government and public health partners to see if she can offer the kits for free.
Nurx, a telemedicine platform that offers birth control, PrEP, and STI test delivery, is also working on an at-home coronavirus test that will launch “within the week,” according to the company. The test will be available to people who have had direct exposure to COVID-19 and/or are experiencing symptoms.
PS: Make sure you tune in tomorrow for my last Term Sheet (😢) and for more details about the future of the newsletter!
Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Scopely, a Culver City, Calif.-based developer of mobile and tablet touch-screen games, raised $200 million in Series D funding from Advance and The Chernin Group.
- UserTesting, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider for on-demand human insights, raised $100 million in funding. Insight Partners led the round, and was joined by investors including Accel, OpenView, and Greenspring.
- Robin Games, a developer and publisher of free-to-play mobile Lifestyle Gaming, raised $7 million in seed funding. LVP led the round, and was joined by investors including 1Up Ventures, Alpha Edison, Everblue Management, firstminute Capital, Greycroft Tracker Fund, Hearst Ventures and Third Kind Venture Capital.
- Around, a video calling workplace platform, raised $5.2 million in funding. Floodgate and Initialized Capital co-led the round, and were joined by investors including Credo Ventures and Naval Ravikant.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- KKR agreed to buy Viridor, a U.K.-based recycling company, for £4.2 billion, or $4.85 billion. Read more.
IPOs
- Blue Moon, a Chinese detergent maker backed Hillhouse Capital Group, has picked banks for a Hong Kong-based IPO raising up to $1 billion this year, Reuters reports citing sources. Read more.
- Social Capital Hedosophia, a Palo Alto-based partnership co-founded by the team that brought Virgin Galactic public, postponed plans to raise $300 million and $600 million for its second and third blank check companies respectively. The latter fund is seeking a tech acquisition likely outside the U.S. Read more about II and III.
EXITS
- Lindsay Goldberg sold VDM Metals, a Germany-based developer of high-performance materials, to Acerinox, S.A. for €532 million ($572 million).
PEOPLE
- Tuesday Capital promoted Prashant Fonseka to partner and David Jee to associate.


fortune--2020-03-19--Tips for coping with stress amid the coronavirus

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Senate passes coronavirus relief legislation, governors step into the spotlight, and you all share your wonderful anti-stress strategies. Have a relaxed Thursday.
– Staving off stress. Yesterday, Claire asked for your stress-relievers—the techniques or strategies that are helping keep you sane through this chaotic and trying time. And you really came through! Your responses were inspiring—I’m planning to add many of them to my new homebound routine immediately. Here’s a sampling:
Several of you mentioned the soothing effect of listening to podcasts. Audio news and storytelling has become a commuting fixture for many of us (myself included), so it makes sense to incorporate them into your WFH day. M.C. says she’s created some stability to her routine by “still listening to the same podcasts I usually listen to during my commute as I get ready [in the morning].” Another podcast fan, E.R. recommends checking out Encyclopedia Womannica, which profiles women from history. “It’s nice to listen to an uplifting story each morning as I start my day,” she says.
Not surprisingly, working in some type of physical activity, meditation, or breathwork is another theme that came up again and again. L.P. told us that she’s started tuning in to streaming live classes being offered by her regular yoga studio. “They also have an online subscription with prerecorded videos but there’s something comforting about knowing several yogis are tuning in to practice at the same time – it makes me feel less isolated,” she says. For those who don’t have a livestream of choice, K.W. recommends an app called Downdog for unique yoga routines.
If you can exercise outdoors, the sunlight and fresh air will also help. But even opening the windows of your home or apartment can provide a boost, says M.P.: “When we both start up work in the AM, we leave 3-4 windows open for at least 30 minutes. It helps our apartment feel fresh.”
Writing in from Milan, where she’s on her second week of quarantine, S.W. recommends setting your phone to ‘do not disturb’ when you can. “Whenever I need a break from news, texts, insta messages, or calls, whether I’m cooking, working out, (trying to) meditate, DND is very helpful. Being inundated with news and constantly having the same ‘how are you’ conversation can be draining. DND FTW.”
Another tip came from M.C., who is keeping a “gratitude journal.” She says: “It can be so easy to get overwhelmed and upset with all the negative news we’re constantly flooded with. A few highlights: 1) being able to be with family during this time, and 2) technology that makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family. My friends and I even made a list over a text chain yesterday of all the restaurants, bars, and events we are looking forward to going back to once all of this craziness is over! Gives us something to look forward to.”
Our readers from digital self-care startup Shine pointed out that the company has partnered with Mental Health America to create a whole mini-site dedicated to helping people manage their COVID-19-related anxiety. Check it out here.
While we as journalists are generally proponents of keeping up with the news, that doesn’t have to mean reading every little minute-by-minute update. K.S.—who is eight months pregnant while socially isolating with her two-year-old and husband (“to say I’m experiencing stress is an understatement”) has gone on a strict news diet, leaving it to her family to inform her of big developments that she really must know. “I’m trying to stay in my social isolation bubble and make it one day at a time,” she says.
E.H., from rural Washington State, has taken FaceTimes with friends to a new level. “I have thrown myself into organizing fun events for my co-workers and friends via video calls. We’ve done several ‘show and tell’ sessions, some meetings to help figure out what’s for dinner and we’re doing a virtual scavenger hunt next week. For my friends, I’m setting up a virtual book club with video call discussions later this month.” She’s also gotten into computer games: “The virtual reality provides a portal away from my reality. A grown adult buying up expansion packs and reading cheats for Sims 4? Why not.”
With Friday around the corner, we wanted to build on the excellent suggestions for apps and podcasts that you’ve already shared. We’ll all be spending plenty of time at home this weekend, and we’d love to hear your recommendations for how to while away the non-work hours. What books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, games, YouTube videos, and other entertainment do you recommend to your fellow Broadsheeters? Send ‘em our way: Broadsheet@fortune.com
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Senate and sick leave. The Senate passed the coronavirus relief bill that the House approved last week. This version of the bill scales back some of the paid family and medical leave, but still offers two weeks of emergency sick leave to some workers. CNN
- Pregnant amid a pandemic. What's it like to be pregnant amid a global pandemic? Writer Irin Carmon shares her own experience in The Cut; in the Wall Street Journal, women—some who have tested positive for the coronavirus—describe a time of anxiety.
- From muscle cars to ventilators. General Motors, led by CEO Mary Barra, is offering to make hospital ventilators in its factories that have been shuttered by the coronavirus outbreak. She's building on legacy of helping out during a crisis: Detroit automakers turned their manufacturing power toward supplying U.S. troops during World War II. Bloomberg
- Cheers, governor. Without strong federal leadership on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, governors are stepping into the spotlight. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer listed all the steps her state has taken to fight the virus after President Trump attacked her for criticizing his response. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown is working on protecting elections along with combatting the pandemic. New York Times
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Not so fast... If the federal government is going to bail out major corporations and industries, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a few requirements. To be eligible for assistance, companies must keep workers on their payrolls; institute a $15 minimum wage; and agree to a permanent ban on share buybacks, Warren says. CNN
- Landmark law. New Zealand passed a bill to decriminalize abortion nationwide, removing abortion from the country's Crimes Act and allowing women to choose to have an abortion up until 20 weeks. Advocates had tried to change the law for decades; Jacinda Ardern promised to bring the issue to a vote when she became prime minister. Associated Press
- Move fast? Amid failures in coronavirus testing, some startups are stepping in and trying to make tests more readily available. The birth control telemedicine startup Nurx, run by CEO Varsha Rao, is preparing to launch home testing for COVID-19. Julia Cheek's Everlywell is also introducing home testing.
- Lawyer up. Ghislaine Maxwell sued Jeffrey Epstein's estate, arguing that the late convicted sex offender had promised to pay her legal fees, resulting from her alleged involvement in his sex trafficking ring. Maxwell says she had "no knowledge of Epstein's alleged misconduct" and that she has incurred significant costs resulting from her work for his businesses. New York Times
ON MY RADAR
Suddenly, everyone realized how awesome teachers are MEL Magazine
Celeste Ng says Little Fires Everywhere is a challenge to 'well-intentioned' white ladies BuzzFeed
Sen. Amy Klobuchar addresses rumors of joining Biden's ticket as vice president ABC News
PARTING WORDS
"This moment is as true a testament there is to the human spirit."
-Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on Instagram; they've devoted their account to resources to help people with the physical and mental toll of the coronavirus pandemic


fortune--2020-03-19--How Garmin keeps pace with giant rivals such as Apple and Google

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Companies and people do come through crises. Garmin, which most people know as a maker of consumer fitness devices, survived not one but two tough times in the late oughts. Its story, ably told by Fortune’s Danielle Abril in the current issue of the magazine, is a good reminder of how and why great companies make it through to the other side.
Garmin was an unlikely consumer success to begin with. Its founders were Allied Signal engineers who had worked on military-grade applications of GPS, the government-controlled satellite navigation system. When GPS opened for civilian use, Garmin founders Gary Burrell and Min Kao—Garmin is a mashup of their first names—made a device for boaters, pilots, and other enthusiasts that became a household name.
Then came the double whammy of Google Maps on the iPhone followed by the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The company’s sales and stock price got slammed, but it kept making money. And being the good Midwesterners that they are—Garmin is headquartered in a suburb of Kansas City—they stayed focused on products related to GPS. As Garmin CEO Cliff Pemble related to Abril in a rare interview, a bunch of running enthusiast employees already had begun noodling on jamming GPS into a watch. As Garmin’s automotive product declined into irrelevance, its fitness devices soared.
What I love about the Garmin story is how the company stayed focused, and how well it has fared despite competing with the giants of Silicon Valley.
There’s your story of hope for what feel like hopeless times.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Clickety-clack. From our lips to Tim Cook's ears. Apple announced several updates on Wednesday, including a cheaper MacBook Air with an improved scissor-mechanism keyboard and a speedier iPad Pro with a...wait for it...improved scissor-mechanism keyboard add-on. The new keyboard also has a trackpad, a first for the Apple tablet.
Stars in my eyes. After a cancelled launch a few days ago, SpaceX had better luck on Wednesday, successfully lofting 60 more satellites for its Starlink Internet service. Elon Musk's incipient broadband-from-space plan now has over 350 satellites in orbit, getting close to operational capacity (400 satellites will provide "minor" coverage of the Earth, the company has said).
It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum—and I'm all outta gum. Cooped up inside and playing lots of video games? That seems to be the trend—Verizon said that while its total Internet traffic is up 20% this week from last week, traffic related to gaming is up 75%. Sony whet the appetite of gamers by unveiling further details about its upcoming PlayStation 5. The new box will run a custom processor from AMD that can perform more than 10 teraflops and has SSD storage to load a 2 GB game in one-quarter of a second.
I'll sell water to a well. State and federal regulators approved Square's application to open a bank in Utah. The payments startup says its banking unit will offer small business loans starting next year.
Putting the 'A' in 'Q&A.' Newly off of Microsoft's board, maybe Bill Gates had some extra time on his hands? He jumped on Reddit yesterday for a quick session of "Ask Me Anything" about COVID-19. Bottom line: "We do need to stay calm even though this is an unprecedented situation." In other tech pandemic updates, an Amazon warehouse worker in Queens, N.Y., tested positive for the virus and the company shuttered the facility temporarily for cleaning. Meanwhile, the European Union asked Netflix to reduce the quality of its streamed videos to preserve bandwidth.
Extra edition. Tuesday's "Food for Thought" section should have noted that the story of Tyler Gillet's search for a forgotten 1990s song was initially reported by Gimlet's delightful Reply All podcast. Worth a listen.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery gave out its Turing award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of computing. The winners were Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmull, names that might be familiar to any close readers of the credits from movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc, or The Incredibles. The pair of researchers helped Pixar create RenderMan, the underlying software that made realistic digitally animated movies possible. New York Times reporter Cade Metz explains how Hanrahan and Catmull also published papers to help others in the field.
“Almost every project was owned by the community of computer scientists,” said Michael Rubin, the author of “Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution,” who worked alongside Dr. Catmull at Lucasfilm. “A product like RenderMan was not just something made by Pixar, for Pixar. It belonged to the community.”
This accelerated the development of software and hardware like the specialized computer chips needed to generate 3-D images. These graphics processing units, or G.P.U.s, drove the 3-D computer games that became ubiquitous in the 1990s and 2000s. Later, they played an essential role in the design of virtual reality and artificial intelligence technology, including the techniques that underpinned self-driving cars, facial recognition services and talking digital assistants like Alexa.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
6 steps to sustainably flatten the coronavirus curve By Rich Lesser
3 things Facebook is doing to counter criticism of its coronavirus response By Danielle Abril
Here’s why Zoom was zooming even before the coronavirus pandemic By Michal Lev-Ram
Your tips for working from home…with kids By Claire Zillman and Emma Hinchliffe
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
NASA had an unusual solution to solve a problem with the InSight Lander that's supposed to be digging beneath the surface of Mars. When the craft's digger got stuck in clumpy soil, the only way to free it? Have the lander bang itself with the shovel on its robotic arm. Ouch! Also, per a promise to one of my stuck-at-home teens: penguins!
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-03-19--‘Health Silk Road:’ China showers Europe with coronavirus aid as both spar with Trump

Last month, Beijing’s ambassador to Estonia accused the Baltic nation’s intelligence service of having a “Cold War mindset” for labeling China a threat, warning that its “distorted” conclusions damaged bilateral relations.
Four weeks later, Estonian officials took part in a video conference hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which the Asian country’s health officials shared their experience in fighting the novel coronavirus.
The Estonians found the materials “very professional and targeted” and sought to distribute them widely, according to an account of the call posted by China’s embassy in Tallinn. “Estonia hopes to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China to fight against Covid-19,” it said.
Estonia, a member of the European Union, is far from alone in its conflicted relations with China — nor in becoming a sudden target of Chinese largess. As Europe becomes the epicenter of the virus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, Beijing is stepping up its outreach to individual governments there.
That’s coming at the very moment that the U.S. — and in some cases the EU — is seen to be turning away. The result is a battle for hearts and minds that China seems to be winning, at least for the moment.
“It’s great that China has this availability and that it is currently in a position to offer this kind of help,” said Lucrezia Poggetti, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Aid is much needed, she said, but in supplying it, China is consciously exercising its soft power. “There is a major propaganda push at play on the side of the Chinese with some willing enablers on the European side,” Poggetti said.
For China, the outreach to Europe is part of an effort to claw back an international leadership role after early cover-ups helped the virus spread well beyond its borders. President Xi Jinping’s government has sought to silence critics, including reporters and online commentators, and also spread conspiracy theories about where the virus originated.
Geopolitically, China’s move to brand itself as Europe’s savior aims to improve its standing on a global stage as both spar with the Trump administration. China and the U.S. have continued a wider fight for global influence — Beijing kicked out more than a dozen American journalists this week — while also seeking to deflect blame for their handling of the disease.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to Covid-19 as a “Chinese virus,” and insisted Wednesday that the term wasn’t racist. He has has also angered Europe, barring all travel from the continent without consulting U.S. allies.
This week, Xi described China’s mass deployment of medical aid to Europe as an effort to further a “Health Silk Road,” stretching his Belt and Road trade-and-infrastructure initiative. Along with well-publicized state help for stricken countries such as Italy, aid is being channeled across the continent by private companies in the name of Beijing, helping to burnish China’s image from France to Ukraine.
On Wednesday, China’s ambassador in Athens delivered more than 50,000 protective masks to the Greek health minister. The Chinese embassy in Paris has said help was coming to France, while Bulgaria and Slovenia were also getting aid.
Xi told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a call Tuesday that China would provide support to combat the epidemic. That same day, an aircraft carrying medical aid from China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and billionaire Jack Ma’s foundation arrived at Spain’s Zaragoza Airport, the Chinese embassy said on Twitter.
📢 Aterriza en el aeropuerto de #Zaragoza un avión con material médico de la Fundación @AlibabaGroup y la @foundation_ma para ayudar a #España a combatir el #COVID19 🇨🇳🤝🇪🇸 https://t.co/t1QQ1UOcfZ — Embajada de China en España (@ChinaEmbEsp) March 17, 2020
Alibaba and the Jack Ma Foundation have also been involved in airlifting aid to Belgium and to Ukraine, which needs express tests to detect the coronavirus. “We agreed with China and we are grateful to them, especially grateful to Jack Ma as he helped us by financing the $80 million” cost of the medical kit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late Monday.
Others are turning to China out of desperation. Cyprus, Luxembourg and even Norway, which has the world’s largest sovereign wealth find, have called on Beijing for support or are considering doing so.
In Lithuania — another Baltic state that fell out with China over a critical security assessment — Health Minister Aurelijus Veryga said his government was reaching out to China to buy “several hundred” lung ventilators. “We don’t want to wait” for joint EU medical supply purchases, Veryga said Wednesday.
That kind of dependence on China is a warning sign for some.
‘Exposed’ to China
“This crisis has showed how exposed we in Romania and in Europe are to imports from China,” Romanian Economic Minister Virgil Popescu said this week, adding that the government in Bucharest aims to encourage domestic production of health-care products as a result.
China’s offers of donations to the EU centrally and to individual member states is “highly appreciated,” an EU spokesperson said in an emailed response to questions. Still, the bloc regarded the help as reciprocal for when China was in need and “we were doing our utmost” to support them.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen noted that the EU had donated 50 tons of equipment to China in January as she tweeted China’s announcement on Wednesday it would provide 2 million surgical masks, 200,000 N95 masks and 50,000 testing kits for Europe.
Not all aid is without strings. Some is in the form of purchase contracts that serve to help Chinese manufacturers striving to restore production after China’s weeks-long lockdown, said Poggetti at Merics. Other support serves a domestic political agenda in Europe.
‘Not Alone’
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who was instrumental in Italy becoming the first Group of Seven nation to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative last year, staged a live Facebook video last week to show the arrival of medical equipment and a team of Chinese doctors. “We are not alone, there are people in the world who want to help Italy,” he said.
In a speech Sunday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic praised China effusively for its support in helping his country battle the virus, and contrasted China’s provision of medical aid to the “fairy tale” of solidarity from Europe. Serbia is a recipient of Chinese investments whose bid to join the EU remains far in the future.
For Gao Zhikai, a former Chinese diplomat and translator to late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, China’s aid for Europe is a matter of vital international cooperation, since “in the fight against Covid-19, mankind is in the same boat.”
“Europe does not need to be charmed,” he said in an interview. “Many European countries need assistance and solidarity. For China, helping Italy and other European countries in these difficult times is the right thing to do.”
It is too soon to say whether China’s European outreach will have a lasting impact, said Poggetti. China’s one-party state and record on human rights is generally viewed negatively in Europe, but its actions during the current crisis may help win over some.
In certain sections of society, “the image of China as savior while the U.S. and Europe leave us alone is really resonating,” she said.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to prepare your personal finances for a coronavirus recession
—The coronavirus could upend America’s business relationships to China
—10 questions about the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic, answered
—3 months before the coronavirus, a war game showed we weren’t ready
—How hackers are exploiting the coronavirus—and how to protect yourself
—The coronavirus pandemic could mark a huge shift for the fitness industry
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: The race is on to create a coronavirus antiviral drug and vaccine
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