fortune--2020-12-18--‘Hamilton’ the musical and the seductive danger of nostalgia

In our last newsletter of the year, we take some time to ask some big questions about 2020. Who lives, who dies, who tells our story?
But first, here’s your COVID-19 vaccine week in review, in Haiku.
Happiness is a
slow jab; a syringe of hope
served cold offered to
all. What does it mean
to save the entire world?
One jab, two jabs for
parties and dances
and all of the holidays,
sitting at tables
eating and making
merry. Happiness will be
laughing together
grieving together,
being together. What will
we do with this chance?
Stay safe while making your merry this holiday season. We see and appreciate all of you. RaceAhead will return on January 5, 2021. Let’s do the most with the chances we’ve got, together.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
Let's not throw away our shot
So, here’s a funny pandemic confession: I can’t get the music from Hamilton out of my head. I mean, I really can’t.
It’s been a constant running personal soundtrack since I saw the film version after it was made available on Disney+ last summer and I cannot precisely say why. Of course, the show is groundbreaking and the performances were extraordinary. Show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius on many levels, not the least of which was using the power of hip hop to interpret the chattiest and most prolific of the early colonists. The word-density is both dazzling and fitting.
And yes, it was truly a thing to see people of color together on a Broadway stage, the stars not only of the show, but of American history. Hamilton’s relentless ego. Jefferson’s simpering pettiness. Burr's entitled rage. Angelica Schuyler’s cynical machinations. George Washington’s noble graces. Eliza Schuyler's heart and soul. And Peggy! Miranda along with Daveed Diggs, Lesley Odom, Jr., Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Phillipa Soo, and Jasmine Cephas Jones not only delivered the musical "case" for diversity, but raised the bar to new heights. I was mesmerized. It hit my bruised pandemic brain like a bolt from the blue. They gave me the first truly worry-free and happy moments since mid-March. I was, for two hours, out of my own head.
Now they are in it, all the time.
Dumped from a Zoom call? “What’d I miss?” I sing out as I hastily dial back in. Need me to do another take for a podcast? “One last time….?” I ask. Someone annoys me? “You are the worst, sir,” I mutter to myself. Waiting for U.S. election results? “The world turned upside down,” was on auto-play.
It’s not a perfect show, I get that. Sure, the only women with speaking/singing parts were all in love with sweet Alex, but hey! Evidently, he really was that hot. Who knew?
But history, while happening, is also complicated. And that’s where the song really got stuck in my head.
Hamilton: An American Musical, based on historian Ron Chernow’s biography, glossed over a few stubborn facts about the Founding Fathers, namely that almost all owned slaves, had no qualms about murderous violence directed at Indigenous people, and Hamilton himself—far from being a pro-immigrant liberal—was an elitist who was not a fan of multi-cultural democracy.
Hamilton and his squad were not “poppin' a squat on conventional wisdom / like it or not / bunch of revolutionary manumission abolitionists,” a lyric that drove historians wild. In fact, Hamilton threw away his shot to take a stand on abolition early and often. The critiques that followed the wide release of the musical prompted some real debate and a short-lived “cancel Hamilton” thing. Why launch a show about enslavers and erase, yet again, the voices of the enslaved? In a delightful twist, it started to feel like I'd joined the world’s biggest colonial history study group.
The work paid off. Earlier this year, Jessie Serfilippi, a part-time interpreter at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, in Albany, NY, set the record straight in a new paper called 'As Odious and Immoral a Thing’: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver.
“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” the self-taught historian writes, launching herself to her own unexpected stardom. (It’s a must read.)
To their enormous credit, Miranda and many cast members joined the study group and thoughtfully responded about the choices made in the creation of the show, and their own views on history and equity. More on that here and here, if you’ve got the time.
But for me, the unexpected gift of the never-ending soundtrack was not entertainment, but empathy. And that has served me well as I reflect on the year we've had and think about what lies ahead.
I noticed that I’d come to enjoy, even as a fleeting flirtation, thinking about the early ambitions of the people who invented the country of my birth. I felt some kind of way as I looked for the noble intent behind the principles, as if somehow those early embers, carefully tended, could re-blaze. For the first time, I felt a (brief) attachment to our foundational myth, and an understanding of why it is persistently appealing to white people: It’s a backwards-looking mirror, showing an image of our better selves.
But mirrors are liars and nostalgia is a seductive beast. We ask too much of the founding fathers; they are not who we imagine they were or need them to be. We shouldn’t need them at all. The world is ours to turn upside down, and our divided nation needs a different story to heal. Maybe we can begin by telling the unvarnished truth about the year we just lived through and the years of chronic myth-making that led up to it.
We will never be satisfied until we do.
Luckily for me, the soundtrack started to dissipate last month. It's not all the way gone, but it's quieter now. I’m clearly a ruminating sort of writer, so maybe the music had finally delivered its necessary lesson. Hard to say. The musical is still a safe place for me to land, though, the performances bring me peace as a reliable reminder that we are capable of great things.
And by that, I mean art. Hopefully one day soon, it will mean politics.
To the great relief of my family, I’ve stopped with the King George impressions. And I can unreservedly celebrate Christopher Jackson’s version of George Washington—with his nobility and perfect pitch—while continuing to hold Washington’s legacy at a clear-eyed distance.
Sure, it would be nice, it would be so nice, to have Washington actually on our side.
If only he had not been cruel. If only his “beautiful” song for the country wasn’t based on plunder, sung past the teeth of people who were enslaved, ripped from their mouths for his comfort.
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, now streaming on Netflix, looks to be an excellent watch for the holidays. It features Chadwick Boseman in his final on-screen performance.


fortune--2020-12-18--Trump pardons: 7 high profile people who may get one

Trump pardons : 7 high profile people who may get one

Presidents typically issue a flurry of pardons and commutations on their way out of office and, if reports are accurate, Donald Trump will be no exception. According to one source, President Trump is eager to exercise his clemency power before Christmas, and a new batch of pardons may be announced today.
So far, the President has used the pardon power sparingly. In some cases, his choices enjoyed popular support, including his decisions to pardon historical figures convicted on the basis of racist motives as well as non-violent drug offenders.
Other choices have been more controversial. These include Trump’s decision to pardon the corrupt former governor of Illinois and Michael Flynn, his former national security advisor who had pled guilty to lying to investigators about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador.
Now, in the waning days of Trump’s presidency, a list of even more controversial names is reportedly under consideration for a pardon. Here are seven of the most prominent ones.
Edward Snowden
The former NSA contractor copied and leaked highly classified information about the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. Since 2013, Snowden has lived in exile in Moscow. Hailed as a courageous whistleblower by many, others regard Snowden as a traitor who compromised U.S. security. His name has repeatedly surfaced in possible pardon discussions—with some noting President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, a soldier who leaked sensitive documents—but it’s unclear if Trump is seriously disposed to pardon Snowden.
Ross Ulbricht aka ‘The Dread Pirate Roberts’
Ulbricht is notorious for running the Silk Road, an online marketplace for selling drugs and offering all manner of illicit services. The young Texan operated the site under the name Dread Pirate Roberts and, when he got caught, tried to claim he had passed the business along to a different Dread Pirate—much as his namesake protagonist had done in the Princess Bride movie. The judge didn’t believe his far-fetched story and sentenced him to life in prison. Civil libertarians have long claimed the sentence was too harsh, while Ulbricht’s mother has been waging a relentless campaign to free her son—leading a report this week that President Trump is considering a pardon.
Rudy Giuliani
The former New York mayor has reinvented himself in recent years as a fanatic Trump loyalist. As the President’s personal lawyer, Giuliani has been leading the futile legal campaign to challenge the election results, in part by floating outlandish conspiracy theories. It’s unclear what if any charges Giuliani may be facing, though he has been under federal investigation for his dealings in Ukraine. The New York Times reported this month that he has been discussing a pardon for himself with the President.
Julian Assange
The founder of Wikileaks, Assange is currently in prison in the United Kingdom, where he is fighting extradition to the U.S. His critics view him as unsavory figure as a result of rape allegations in Sweden, and his apparent ties to the Russian government. But Assange also has high-profile advocates, including actress and model Pamela Anderson who recently posted bathing suit shots urging Trump to pardon him. Despite the publicity, it’s unclear if Trump is seriously considering clemency for Assange.
Joe Exotic, aka “The Tiger King”
Exotic became a household name after Netflix aired a documentary this year that depicted his exotic cat business, and his feud with an animal rights activist. That feud resulted in Exotic receiving a 22-year sentence for plotting to murder the activist. Exotic’s showbiz lifestyle have led many to speculate that Trump would view him as a kindred spirit and grant a pardon. The Justice Department, however, recently rejected Exotic’s formal application for clemency. Trump could nonetheless disregard the formal protocol and grant a pardon all the same—as he has already done repeatedly.
The Trump children and Jared Kushner
The New York Times reported that Trump is seriously exploring pardons for his three eldest children, Eric, Ivanka and Don Jr. While the latter was implicated in the Russian probe, none of the three Trump kids are currently facing charges—though they may in the future. There is potential legal danger for Ivanka in regard to consultancy fees she received as part of her father’s tax write-offs. Likewise, her husband, Jared Kushner, could face jeopardy over a shell company he allegedly designed to use campaign donations to enrich the family. The President could absolve any wrongdoing, however, by issuing a pre-emptive pardon—something that is in his power to do. Such a pardon, though, would only apply to federal charges. The President could not absolve his family from criminal charges brought by state governments or protect them from prosecution for future criminal activity.
President Donald Trump
Trump has reportedly been asking aides about pardoning himself. Such a move would be an untested assertion of the pardon power given to the President by the Constitution. Many legal scholars are skeptical. There is a clear legal way for Trump to be absolved of any crimes he may have committed—namely by resigning and having Vice President Pence take up the Presidency, and issuing a pardon. That was what happened when President Gexrald Ford absolved his predecessor, Richard Nixon. But there is no indication Trump is willing to follow such a playbook, meaning the untested self-pardon looms as real possibility.


fortune--2020-12-18--The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is dangerously flawed. Science and data could fix it

With limited supplies of COVID-19 vaccines now available, states are scrambling to decide who should be first in line to receive the shots. But in many cases, that question is being settled based on loosely labeled groupings of at-risk populations, such as “the elderly” or “essential workers.” While it may sound simple, this approach is shortsighted, because it ignores the incredibly complex mix of factors that put people at greater health risk and have been shown to drive increased incidences of hospitalization and mortality due to COVID-19.
A precise determination of health risks must be the foundation of a successful vaccination effort. Otherwise, scarce resources will be squandered on those less in need while blocking vaccine access for the most vulnerable.
How should states identify those most at risk with precision? They must have a way not only of analyzing basic demographic data but also of taking into account underlying health conditions, social and environmental determinants of health, and the latest research on the mechanisms of the coronavirus.
For that difficult but critically important task, states must heed the advice of frontline doctors and researchers who have been working around the clock to solve this public health challenge. Many of them say that the best tool at our disposal is machine learning.
Machine learning leverages all the data available and can detect important hidden patterns that will otherwise go unnoticed—and alert us to the heightened needs of people who might otherwise slip through the cracks. I saw this firsthand in a recent project involving my data science company, Cogitativo, and the insurer Blue Shield of California. In the early days of the pandemic, Blue Shield of California stepped up and sought to provide personalized health counseling and support services to its most COVID-vulnerable members. The insurer engaged us to identify those vulnerable members.
Cogitativo built a machine learning platform that brings together factors about an individual’s health history (in particular, whether the individual has a specific high-risk underlying condition) combined with social, environmental conditions and the most up-to-date medical literature on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. These factors predict the risk of having adverse health outcomes from COVID-19 infection.
Many of the findings were surprising. For example, the risk-scoring tool found that individuals who did not live within a close-enough vicinity to a grocery store were at an increased risk of ending up in the hospital, on a ventilator, or even dying from COVID-19. Another finding was that individuals who had experienced severe mental-health issues were at greater risk. Based on these and other insights, Blue Shield of California provided various services to its members, including free meal delivery, medication delivery, telemedicine, and in-home clinical visits.
The lesson from our project in California was clear: Relying solely on age or making judgment calls about whether employees in a particular industry are at greater risk will result in vulnerable populations being overlooked and put at unnecessary risk or worse.
This flawed approach for allocating constrained vaccine supplies could exacerbate inequities that have already devastated communities of color during the pandemic. Latinx and African-Americans in the U.S. have been three times more likely to contract the virus and twice as likely to die from the virus than corresponding white populations. We cannot, for example, fail to account for one important risk factor such as housing density, which is much greater in urban communities. The vaccine distribution effort must play a role in reducing these disparities, not widening them.
A failure to prioritize the most vulnerable for vaccination will cause avoidable deaths. As someone who has experienced the pain of losing family to avoidable health events, I ask that states act now to solidify their vaccine distribution strategies. The virus is surging again. In recent weeks, hospitalizations in the U.S. have soared to record highs; daily reported cases have blown past previous records; and there were three consecutive days of more than 2,500 deaths for the first time. Furthermore, public health officials are warning that some of the darkest days of the pandemic lie ahead.
States must use the most advanced technological tools at their disposal. Machine learning provides an equitable, precise, and expedient capability to allocate our precious vaccine supplies. The use of science and of data-driven decision-making can help ensure that states reach the right people at the right time—and that no American gets left behind.
Gary Velasquez is the cofounder and CEO of Cogitativo, a data science company.


fortune--2020-12-18--Sony pulls Cyberpunk 2077 video game from PlayStation store after user complaints

Rebellion is in the air at Polish video game publisher CD Projekt SA after the company’s highly anticipated, and thrice-delayed, latest title was released to scathing reviews about glitches.
Frustrated and angry staff fired questions at the board during an internal video meeting Thursday that opened with management apologizing for Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch, according to two people who were present. It was a fitting atmosphere for a company whose slogan, plastered on posters all around its Warsaw office, is “We are rebels.”
Developers asked blunt questions about the company’s reputation, the game’s unrealistic deadlines and the relentless overtime in the months and years leading up to the game’s Dec. 10 release.
The meeting took place before Sony Corp.’s shocking announcement that it was pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and will offer full refunds to any customer who requests one. During the staff meeting, CD Projekt’s directors said they had come to an arrangement with Sony but didn’t offer specifics. In a Twitter post on Friday, the company said that “following our discussion with PlayStation, a decision was made to temporarily suspend digital distribution” of the game.
A CD Projekt spokeswoman said the company wouldn’t comment on internal meeting discussions.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the biggest games of the year and has been a financial success, selling more than 8 million pre-orders and notching sales records for PC games. But players have found the game full of bugs, particularly on the last-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, sending CD Projekt shares plummeting and leading fans and critics to describe Cyberpunk 2077 as unfinished. CD Projekt’s stock fell 12% in Warsaw Friday, punctuating a steady decline this month that has wiped out gains for the year.
During Cyberpunk 2077’s development, staff endured multiple periods of extensive overtime including mandatory six-day weeks to finish the game, Bloomberg has reported. When asked about this crunch time in the Q&A, the directors said they had plans to improve production practices in the future but didn’t elaborate, according to one person who was there.
One employee asked the board why it had said in January that the game was “complete and playable” when that wasn’t true, to which the board answered that it would take responsibility. Another developer asked whether CD Projekt’s directors felt it was hypocritical to make a game about corporate exploitation while expecting that their employees work overtime. The response was vague and noncommital.
Many industry observers have wondered why Cyberpunk 2077, which was first announced in 2012 and was delayed three times in 2020, still appears to be unfinished. Several current and former staff who worked on Cyberpunk 2077 have all said the same thing: The game’s deadlines, set by the board of directors, were always unrealistic. It was clear to many of the developers that they needed more time.


fortune--2020-12-18--Biden wants to change how credit scores work in America

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The credit industry isn’t working if you ask consumer advocates. The Big Three credit agencies—Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian—are black boxes, gathering and selling consumer data, grading us on our financial behavior without letting us in on how they do it, and perpetuating damaging racial disparities while they’re at it.
That’s why consumer advocates are calling for a public credit reporting agency, and why President-elect Joe Biden has adopted a proposal for just that from left-leaning think tank Demos.
The proposal suggests building a publicly run credit reporting agency within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would eventually, over the course of seven years, replace the current for-profit credit system in America. The agency would be steered by consumer need rather than the bottom line, according to proposal author Amy Traub.
“Today, credit reports, which are issued by just three large private companies, are rife with problems: They often contain errors, they leave many ‘credit invisible’ due to the sources used to generate a credit score, and they contribute to racial disparities,” Biden’s plan for investing in communities through housing reads.
Credit scores impact nearly every corner of an American’s financial life. A less-than-ideal credit score can make it much harder to get a loan for a house or car, start a business, or even get a job. And much of how creditworthiness is determined perpetuates the racist systems and policies that have plagued Black, Latinx, and other minority communities.
Since the Equifax breach, which compromised the personal data of more than 145 million people, the credit industry has come under increased fire for its lack of transparency and its deepening of inequity. The coronavirus pandemic has shone a light on those issues, and consumer complaints have skyrocketed. As of mid-December, the CFPB has already received over 400,000 complaints—47% more than the previous annual record set in 2019—led by those about credit reporting, according to senior director of U.S. PIRG’s federal consumer program Ed Mierzwinski.
“I think it’s an idea that’s time has come,” Traub said, optimistic about Biden’s adoption of the proposal, spurred in part by Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of it in 2019.
It would be a big lift, but Biden ran on big promises to address racial disparities and economic justice, and this plan would be a piece of that puzzle.
Credit scores and the companies that issue them reproduce the racial wealth gap and bolster the discriminatory policies that create it. In the current system, credit scoring and other lending algorithms disproportionately label Black and Latinx people as riskier borrowers, according to Demos. Those groups are also more likely to have a “thin file,” or short credit history, which allows for many lenders to view them as risky as well.
A public credit registry would develop a transparent algorithm with an eye toward equality and removing obstacles that keep minorities from receiving loans at reasonable rates, according to the Demos proposal. One such obstacle is medical debt, which the Demos paper proposes should be left out of credit history. When people incur medical debt, it is not often a rational financial decision made with the ability to repay in mind; it’s usually taken on in an emergency for a sum unknown to the borrower until after the care has been given. And in the midst of a pandemic that has forced record-high unemployment levels, in a country that largely ties health insurance and employment together, medical debt is on the rise. This is unlike, say, a car loan, which allows borrowers the time to think rationally about taking it on. At the proposed public credit reporting agency, the car loan would factor into score and creditworthiness, but medical debt would not.
Another piece of data that would no longer be factored into questions of consumer creditworthiness is inability to repay predatory loans. The paper asserts that “a consumer’s inability to repay an abusive loan (such as the shoddy mortgages that lenders aggressively marketed in communities of color during the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis) reveals little about how the same borrower would handle credit provided on fair terms.”
Biden’s public credit agency would take some new data into account, too, such as cash flow or history of rent and utility payments—but only if consumers affirmatively opted in. This is a model that is already being used in fintech to issue loans to those deemed unworthy by traditional banks. It is also an option at credit bureaus, but that offering is not mandated.
“The incoming administration is supportive of policies that would bring more accurate and reliable data into the credit reporting ecosystem to help improve access to credit for underserved consumers,” said Francis Creighton, president and CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association, the trade group for consumer reporting companies including the major credit bureaus. “CDIA supports these efforts, and we have and will continue to advocate for policy innovations to achieve these goals.”
Brian Hamilton, CEO of One, a fintech and banking services company aimed at middle-income households, said he believes in the “spirit” of the public credit reporting agency in question, but he thinks that private industry is better suited to solve the problems that the proposal outlines than the government is. The federal government, he said, should make offering the option to add additional sources of credit history mandatory and increase oversight of the algorithms used to determine creditworthiness and the data collected on consumers. But building its own credit agency from the ground up when traditional banks, credit agencies, and fintech companies are already doing that work is not the best use of the government’s time in Hamilton’s eyes.
“I’m really in favor of private industry solving the problem with the support of the administration and their goals. They have the right goals in the spirit of what they’re trying to do, which I’m 100% for,” he said. “Push the existing credit bureaus to leverage their nontraditional data in their scores and be transparent about what they are doing with people’s data and how it is affecting scores. And then support the industry.”
Even though Hamilton doesn’t think the public credit reporting agency is the right way to go to address financial injustice, he does think that the federal government has a large role to play. He said that on top of supporting industry and increasing oversight, Biden should also “triple down” on financial education in the U.S. so consumers understand their options and can navigate the credit system better than the generations before them.
Unlike Hamilton, Mierzwinski said that consumer advocates, himself included, think building a public credit agency is “a great idea.”
“This is a market that’s broken,” he said. “It’s like Groundhog Day, dealing with the credit bureaus, because they continue to do the things they did from the beginning, which is make a lot of mistakes, perpetuate the racial wealth gap, and refuse to treat consumers as customers because, in fact, their customers are businesses.”
Mierzwinski thinks now is the right time to turn the reins over to the public sector. For-profit credit agencies answer to investors and their corporate customers, but the CFPB was created to put the consumer first.
What happens to the Equifaxes and Experians when a public agency takes over, though? The companies also have robust international credit businesses, along with collecting and selling data in the U.S., a business that won’t be impeded by the switch.
“I don’t feel bad for the credit bureaus,” Mierzwinski said. “The credit bureaus can still collect information. And they can still run all of their data broker activities and direct marketing programs that are not related to the credit reporting systems. So it’s not like they would go away.”
Equifax directed Fortune to CDIA, and Experian and TransUnion did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
And should the establishment of the Demos version of a public credit reporting agency become reality, the shift from for-profit primacy to one public option would take seven years, so the agencies would have plenty of time to adjust their business models if need be, according to Mierzwinski and Traub.
But Biden’s ability to get anything done is still up in the air. The Senate runoffs in Georgia will determine whether Republicans maintain control under Mitch McConnell. If McConnell’s party comes out of Georgia victorious, the chances of Biden being able to build a public credit agency become slimmer, but not zero. If Democrats take control of the Senate and therefore control Congress and the presidency, there’s a good chance that the building of a public credit agency will be set into motion early on in the President-elect’s term.
How the agency is established and operates is up for debate. At the Democratic convention this year, the party adopted the idea of a public registry in its platform, but suggested it as an alternative choice for consumers rather than as an eventual replacement for the for-profit credit industry as the Demos proposal suggests. The Biden transition team did not respond to requests for comment on the President-elect’s preferred approach, but Biden’s transition website links to the Demos proposal.
Republicans and Democrats tend to agree that the current system lacks necessary transparency, and many also agree that it perpetuates inequality. Should Congress remain split, green-lighting a public credit reporting agency could find bipartisan support, but it wouldn’t come without a fight from consumer advocates and lawmakers.


fortune--2020-12-18--A solution for cash-strapped cities is right at the curb

In less than a year, one microscopic virus has brought upheavals large and small in the way people and goods move around. Transit ridership is way down; automobile traffic is increasing. People are ordering goods online rather than shopping in stores—UPS deliveries in the second quarter of this year were up nearly 23% from the same time last year. Ninety percent of consumers now prefer delivery over a store visit.
The consequence? Shopping mall parking lots are empty, while delivery vehicles fill up our streets. Around the country, there is more road congestion, double-parking, and idling time at the curb as companies increasingly bring their goods to us.
Pandemics, despite (or perhaps because of) their devastation, are known to lead to periods of great creativity. Upheaval has given us the gift of thinking, on many fronts, “Why weren’t we doing this all along?”
Here’s one of those ideas: For nearly 100 years, we have charged drivers of personal cars for parking at the curb. It’s time to start charging delivery companies for stopping there too. To create new revenue streams for cities and towns and finally make order out of the chaos of curb congestion, have the Ubers, Amazons, and DoorDashes of the world pay for the right to stop and deliver.
Our company, Automotus, helps cities manage curbside delivery and ride-hailing. As a result, our business could benefit from cities charging for commercial curbside use.
Much like with public street parking, managing the curb involves charging ride drop-off companies and package delivery companies for dedicated space. One study found that double-parking by delivery vehicles led to 264.4 hours of delays annually on two-lane streets and 866.5 hours on four-lane streets. By 2029, these delays are estimated to increase by 135%.
Changing how we allocate curb space is about more than traffic. Fallout from the pandemic has left cities in desperate need of new income streams. New York City is facing layoffs of 22,000 city employees, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has already borrowed $450 million from the Federal Reserve to cover operating costs. The city of Miami Beach is facing a $13.8 million shortfall in its parking fund and may privatize up to 50% of its parking enforcement functions.
Charging ride-share and delivery companies for curb access creates revenue from a previously untapped source. In New York City, 20% to 30% of parking violations are committed by commercial operators who rack up millions of dollars in fines each quarter. While other cities across the U.S. may have less delivery traffic, there is still significant revenue opportunity.
We have been deploying video technology and analytics to measure demand at the curb for two years. Rest assured, this is not surveillance—the video feeds are processed in real time to extract data only and are not recorded. We’ve found the sweet spot for balancing vehicle stoppage with parking needs, allowing cities to create paying models through which ride-share and delivery companies can proactively claim their spot at the curb.
Some cities have already done trial runs. In one pilot we ran on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, traffic caused by drivers searching for parking dropped by more than 20%. In Columbus, delivery drivers accessing a curb with specified stopping areas prevented approximately 9,700 double- or illegal parkings.
Charging someone for something they used to have for free is of course never easy. But some companies in the delivery and ride-share space are already on board, with commercial operators paying for dedicated, well-managed curb space in Columbus, Aspen, and Washington, D.C. In 2018, one-quarter of the $181.5 million in commercial parking fines in New York City were paid by UPS and FedEx. None of that is tax-deductible. Paying for parking, on the other hand, is.
Having devoted curb space also saves operators time. Commercial vehicles using designated areas reduce their time at the curb by 28% on average, saving two minutes on each pickup and drop-off. Designated space for commercial vehicles also leads to safer vehicle operation. Double-parking is a safety hazard and disrupter to the normal flow of traffic.
There’s long been a push and pull balancing the needs of cyclists, restaurants, delivery drivers, and ride-share passengers. By changing how we manage our street space, we can create more order in our streets and make them work more efficiently and safely.
We can use this tragic pandemic as a launchpad to make our cities work better. If you’re fortunate enough to see your delivery driver pull into a designated space rather than circle for parking while your tacos get cold, you may delight in thinking, “Wow, why didn’t we do it this way all along?”
Prajwal Kotamraju is head of computer vision at Automotus.


fortune--2020-12-18--Your dealmaking predictions for 2021

Your dealmaking predictions for 2021

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I asked you dear readers for your predictions for 2021, and OMG did y’all have predictions. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into—I was wrong. Now my inbox may need a digital retreat.
The tl;dr: Many of you believe the long-term impact of the pandemic won’t die off but that its effects have been overstated. While consumers are likely to have formed permanent habits that boost e-commerce, grocery delivery, and healthcare tech, you still expect our pre-pandemic behavior to return—to an extent. You also predict a greater focus on addressing the wealth gap.
What’s also telling is what you don’t say: For 2020, readers predicted a recession. That word hasn’t made an appearance this time around. Instead, many of you are expecting valuations for some of the software and productivity companies to come back down to a “healthy” point.
Here’s an excerpt of your predictions. You can read many more here.
It’s not the end of Silicon Valley: “Silicon Valley will continue to be at the top of the totem pole in terms of innovation, but we will also see a distribution of capital, talent and entrepreneurship in other cities as well, which is clearly a great thing. In the same way that Utah is a hub for SaaS companies, Seattle for travel and real estate, or New York for fintech, we will see micro communities emerge across the country.” – Pete Flint, General Partner, NFX
Valuations come down: “As we return from the pandemic and there is rotation of dollars from tech to travel, hospitality and energy sectors hurt by the pandemic, we will see 2021 multiples return to normal yet healthy levels (20-25x forward revenues).” – Dharmesh Thakker, General Partner, Battery Ventures
Offices come back: “The death of office culture and the allure of remote working has been massively overstated. Sure, we want to hang onto some flexibility; but employees at companies of all sizes that have been remote this year are hungering for the connection of their peers and longing to feel the togetherness that’s borne from a shared mission.” – Nicole Johnson, partner, Forerunner Ventures
Some very specific deals could be made or fall through: “DoorDash falls below $100 by July.” – Jerry Chen
“Microsoft buys Akami.” – Bill Mahoney
“Google Cloud, Microsoft or Vmware will acquire Hashi in 2021. Another large acquisition would be Google Cloud acquires Confluent. There’s going to be a wave of acquisitions in the security space. Many tuck-in acquisitions by Crowdstrike, Palo Alto, Zscaler.” – Baris Aksoy
Read more.
And it will be another robust year for IPOs: So many of you predicted this, and that forecast is looking mighty promising. Cryptocurrency marketplace Coinbase says it has filed confidentially for an IPO. As has buzzy software and automation startup UiPath. And the now profitable secondhand clothing marketplace Poshmark has also revealed its IPO prospectus.
HOUSEKEEPING: Due to the Gmail outage three days earlier, some Gmail-based readers may not have received Term Sheet in recent days. You can find those versions of the newsletter here.
That said, we will be off until January 4. See you next year!
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Didi Freight, Didi Chuxing’s on-demand trucking unit, is looking to raise $300 million to $400 million, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
Creditas, a Brazilian fintech, raised $255 million, valuing it at $1.8 billion in Series E funding. Investors include LGT Lightstone, Tarsadia Capital, e.ventures, and Advent International affiliate Sunley House Capital. Current investors SoftBank Vision Fund 1, SoftBank Latin America Fund, VEF, Kaszek Vemtires, and Amadeus Capital Partners also participated.
- Lyra Health, a Burlingame, Calif.-based mental health company, filed to raise a $175 million in Series E valuing it around $2.3 billion. Read more.
- Spryker, a Berlin-based maker of an e-commerce system for companies, raised $130 million in Series C funding. TCV led the round and was joined by investors including One Peak and Project A Ventures.
- Discord, a San Francisco-based social media company with a gaming heavy community, raised $100 million. Greenoaks Capital led the round valuing the business at about $7 billion, per a source.
- GoCardless, a U.K.-based recurring payments company, raised $95 million in Series F funding. Bain Capital Ventures led the round.
- Openly, a Boston-based homeowners insurance company, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Advance Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Gradient Ventures, Obvious Ventures, PJC, and Greenlight Re.
- Octave Bioscience, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based maker of a care management platform for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases, raised $32 million in Series B funding. Northpond Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Deerfield Management and Casdin Capital.
- CoachHub, a London-based online coaching marketplace, raised $30 million. Draper Esprit led the round and was joined by investors including , HV Capital, Partech, Speedinvest, Signals Venture Capital, and RTP Global.
- Yoshi, a San Francisco-based on-demand fueling and car wash business, raised $23 million as a part of its Series B fundraise. GM Ventures led the round
- Rec Room, a Seattle-based maker of a social gaming platform, raised $20 million in Series C funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round and was joined by investors including Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Index, and DAG. Read more.
- Passport, a San Francisco-based shipping carrier, raised $12 million in Series A funding. M13 led the round and was joined by investors including Resolute Ventures, Precursor, Kleiner Perkins, RiverPark, and Republic.
- PostHog, a San Francisco-based open source product analytics platform, raised $9 million in a Series A funding. GV led the round and was joined by investors including YC's Continuity Fund, and Jason Warner (CTO of GitHub).
- GeneMe, a Polish-based biotech with a rapid COVID test, raised €5.2 million ($6.4 million). Robin Tombs (Co-Founder of Yoti) led the round.
- Symbl, a Seattle-based maker of software for real-time transcriptions, raised $4.7 million. Crosscut Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Alexa Fund, Jump Capital, Third Kind VC, Technexus Ventures, and Flying Fish.
- Whatnot, a Marina Del Rey, Fla.-based marketplace, raised $4 million in seed funding. Investors include Scribble Ventures, Wonder Ventures, Operator Partners, and Y Combinator.
- Avenue 8, a San Francisco-based residential real estate brokerage, raised $4 million in seed funding. Craft Ventures, Zigg Capital, and Good Friends invested.
- Tensil, a Burlingame, Calif.-based maker of video editing software, raised $3.9 million in seed funding. Freestyle VC led the round and was joined by investors including Precursor Ventures, Transmedia Capital, UpHonest VC, Rembrandt VC, and Kavyon Beykpour (CEO and Co-Founder of Persicope).
- Nubix, a San Francisco, Calif.-based company with a platform for deploying internet of thing applications, raised $2.7 million in seed funding.Tuscan Management led the round and was joined by investors including Chevron Technology Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Engage Ventures, and Bee Partners
- Umba, a Nairobi-based digital bank, raised $2 million in seed funding. Investors include Lachy Groom (ex Head of Issuing at Stripe), Ludlow Ventures, Frontline Ventures, and Act Venture Capital.
- Perigee, a Boston-based cybersecurity firm, raised $1.5 million. Outsiders Fund's Austin McChord and Teddy Seem led the round and were joined by investors including Westport, Contour Venture Partners, BBG Ventures, Innospark Ventures, Ray Rothrock, and Corey Thomas.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Toscafund and Penta will take over TalkTalk, (LON: TALK) a British broadband provider, for about $1.5 billion.
- Silver Lake, Alphabet, and Temasek invested $700 million in Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division.
- Blackstone made a “significant minority investment: in ISN, a Dallas-based contractor and supplier management software provider, valuing it at over $2 billion.
- AEGIS Hedging, backed by Trilantic North America, acquired Risked Revenue Energy Associates R^2, a commodity trading advisors focused on energy. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Arcline Investment Management acquired a controlling stake in Engineering by Design, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of medical device and manufacturing technologies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Canada Pension Plan Investment Board partnered with AustralianSuper and UniSuper to acquire a 50% stake in Transurban Chesapeake, a toll-road operator in Australia for about $2 billion.
- Five Arrows, the private equity arm of Rothschild & Co., invested in Texthelp, an Irish education and corporate technology company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Kyruus, backed by Francisco Partners, agreed to acquire HealthSparq, a Boston-based healthcare technology company for health plans. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Marlin Equity Partners agreed a majority stake in StarCompliance, a Rockville, Maryland-based provider of employee compliance and regulatory technology solutions to the financial services industry. Luminate Capital Partners will retain a minority stake. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- One Rock Capital Partners agreed to acquire BASF’s vegetable-oil-based raw material sterols and natural vitamin E, anionic surfactants, and esters businesses in Kankakee, Ill. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Novartis agreed to acquire Cadent, a Cambridge, Mass.-based neurosciences company, for up to $770 million. Cadent has raised from investors including Qiming Venture Partners and Atlas Ventures.
- Gryphon Investors acquired Physical Rehabilitation Network, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based outpatient physical therapy provider, from Silver Oak Services Partners. Silver Oak Services Partners will reinvest in the company.
OTHER
- Alphabet’s Google has (finally) won antitrust approval in the E.U. to acquire FitBit, a maker of a smartwatch, for $2.1 billion, after agreeing to limit its usage of customers’ health data. Read more.
- Ferrero agreed to acquire Eat Natural, a British maker of cereal bars, muesli and granola. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Wahed agreed to acquire Niyah, a British company with a digital banking app designed for the Muslim community.
IPOs
- 908 Devices, a Boston-based provider of mass spectrometry devices, raised $130 million after pricing at the high end of its range. Arch Venture Partners backs the firm. Read more.
SPAC
- ScION Tech Growth I, a U.K.-based SPAC formed by ION Investment Group seeking a tech target, raised $500 million.
- Golden Falcon Acquisition, a SPAC seeking a tech, media, or fintech target in Europe, North America, or the Middle East, raised $300 million.
PEOPLE
- CSC Upshot Ventures promoted Victor Yang to principal.
- Anthemis named Matthew Jones as managing director.


fortune--2020-12-18--How hackers could undermine a successful vaccine rollout

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Armed U.S. Marshals kept many of Pfizer’s first coronavirus vaccine shipments safe from thieves and saboteurs this week, but experts warn that less visible threats to the vaccine lurk in cyberspace.
“There is no doubt that vaccine production, and everything about the vaccine, will become a vector of cyberattack,” says Jonathan Reiber, who served as the Defense Department’s cyberstrategy chief under President Obama and is now chief strategist at cybersecurity firm AttackIQ.
Those attacks, according to Reiber and other experts, could take at least three forms: attacks on the integrity of the vaccine supply chain; theft of trade secrets related to the vaccine; and online disinformation campaigns aimed at eroding trust in the vaccine.
Here are what those attacks could look like—or already do.
Break the cold chain
Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has a unique vulnerability: It must be stored at the extremely cold temperature of –70 degrees Celsius. Other vaccine candidates have less stringent requirements but must still be refrigerated.
The good news is that a cyberattack that interferes with vaccine cold storage is unlikely, according to Vinny Troia, a former Defense Department contractor and founder of cybersecurity firm NightLion. The main challenge of such an attack would be in using compromised digital systems to manipulate physical equipment.
“The time it would take to develop and deploy something like that, by the time that happens we’ll probably be done distributing vaccine,” says Troia. He compares it to the effort behind Stuxnet, a virus believed to have been developed by the U.S. and Israel to physically interfere with targets including Iranian nuclear facilities. Information about Stuxnet is still secret, but development is believed to have taken at least four years, from 2005 to 2009.
But hackers wouldn’t have to shut down freezers to meddle with the vaccine cold chain. They would only have to tamper with data.
Bill Brooks, a logistics expert with the consulting firm Capgemini, worries that hackers could try to modify shipping records to show that the vaccine was exposed to improper temperatures. That could render the vaccine unusable—whether or not it was actually compromised.
Malicious actors “want to create doubt,” says Brooks. “[They] want to create chaos in the marketplace, so people are unsure what they’re receiving.”
There are multiple levels of protection against such an attack. Most modern cold-chain monitoring systems have some redundancy, such as transmitting data from monitoring devices to a central database, or paper backups. All health care logistics must also comply with an FDA standard that guarantees traceability of every attempt to access or modify tracking data. Because of those controls, Reiber describes such a data-focused attack as “plausible” but difficult.
“We constantly see people who are trying to spoof into our system, and we spot it very quickly,” says Mark Sawicki, CEO of health logistics company Cryoport Systems, which provides distribution and cold-storage services for 26 different COVID vaccine candidates still in trial stages. “I’m honestly not that concerned with that.”
In response to inquiries about cybersecurity risk, Pfizer said it carefully tracks and responds to threats. “For our COVID-19 vaccine we have developed detailed logistical plans and tools to support effective vaccine transport, storage, and continuous temperature monitoring.”
Controlant, which provides the monitoring technology for distributing Pfizer’s vaccine, also expressed confidence. “Our established security program meets industry standards and best practices for the pharmaceutical industry.”
But Troia says procedural controls such as the FDA’s requirements aren’t guaranteed protection against determined and well-funded hackers. He points to the recent revelations of a foreign cyberattack that compromised the widely used IT software SolarWinds, giving the attackers deep access to systems, including at the U.S. Treasury. More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies are SolarWinds customers, though it’s currently unclear how many, if any, were compromised in the attack.
An attack on tracking data could be deeply damaging, even if it only succeeded at a very small scale.
“Is it enough to do it once?” asks Reiber, the former Defense Department cyberpolicy chief. “Is that enough to help you achieve your strategic goal of sowing distrust? That could be the case.”
Steal the blueprints
“We’ve seen state actors trying to steal vaccine IP from the very beginning of the pandemic,” says Reiber, using shorthand for intellectual property. That has included alleged attempts by state-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea to steal coronavirus vaccine research or production techniques.
According to Troia, the other former Defense Department official, another common tactic is simply scanning software developers’ accounts on sites like GitHub, where many engineers store or share software code—and sometimes, carelessly, passwords.
Once hackers gain access to a GitHub or similar account, says Troia, they search for both sensitive data and credentials for access to other systems, such as Amazon Web Services cloud storage. “That’s like the Holy Grail right now. When they log into the Amazon bucket, it’s all right there on a silver platter.”
Even if a digital IP heist were successful, though, it wouldn’t be inherently harmful to vaccine distribution. In fact, the ultimate goal of such a hack would be to produce more vaccine at a time when many countries are facing an uphill battle and, in some cases, even calling for the emergency rollback of intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines.
Sow seeds of doubt
Troia believes that the most likely tactic for a hostile agent hoping to disrupt U.S. vaccine distribution would not target the vaccine itself, but public perception.
“It’s more likely if you’re trying to cause disruption, you’re going to choose to do disinformation. It’s easier to inject a narrative into a society, especially if there’s a predisposition to distrust something,” he says.
That predisposition is widespread in America. Currently, about 27% of Americans are hesitant to take the vaccine, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, with more than half of those citing distrust of government as a factor.
In 2016, the cyberwarfare arm of Russia’s GRU intelligence agency exploited Americans’ distrust to spread political disinformation. Russian state actors are now allegedly engaged in a similar effort to further undermine faith in Pfizer’s and other successful vaccines. They have reportedly found receptive audiences among anti-vaccination groups on social media sites.
Disinformation efforts may be particularly harmful to African-Americans, who have been disproportionately harmed by the pandemic. Yet 35% of them are hesitant to take a coronavirus vaccine, the Kaiser survey found, well above Americans as a whole. That elevated distrust is in part the legacy of mistreatment of Black people by American medical institutions.
“If I’m putting on my most nefarious adversary hat, I’m going to look at American society and say, who are the populations suffering most under COVID-19?” says Reiber. “And I’m going to try and make that situation worse.”
Attacks on public confidence in vaccines, whether through data sabotage or online disinformation, have implications beyond the individuals who may decline to take the vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci has said 75% to 80% of Americans will need to be vaccinated to end the coronavirus pandemic.
If digital malefactors slow the progress to that threshold, it would be one of the most devastating cyberattacks of all time.
Correction 12.18: This piece previously referred to Vinny Troia as a former Defense Department staffer, rather than a former contractor. We regret the error.


fortune--2020-12-18--Term Sheet readers predict which markets will boom in 2021

This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Each year, we poll Term Sheet readers for what they believe will happen in the upcoming twelve months. And boy do y’all have thoughts.
Many of you believe the long-term impact of the pandemic won’t die off but that its effects have been overstated. While consumers are likely to have formed permanent habits that result in a boon to e-commerce, grocery delivery, and healthcare tech, you still expect much of our pre-pandemic habits to return—to an extent.
What’s also telling is what you don’t say. For 2020, you predicted a recession. That word hasn’t made an appearance this time around. Instead, many of you are expecting valuations for some of the software and productivity companies to come back down to earth to a “healthy” point.
Beyond that, dealmakers predict greater focus sectors including quantum computing, cybersecurity, government tech, and A.I.—though they also anticipate more regulation around the latter.
Here’s how you think 2021 could pan out:
San Francisco doesn’t die
“Silicon Valley will continue to be at the top of the totem pole in terms of innovation, but we will also see a distribution of capital, talent and entrepreneurship in other cities as well, which is clearly a great thing. In the same way that Utah is a hub for SaaS companies, Seattle for travel and real estate, or New York for fintech, we will see micro communities emerge across the country. Often, what it takes is one iconic company to establish a strong talent pool and as talent and capital spins out to build new companies, that creates the ecosystem. Realistically this process takes a decade or more, so it will be exciting to watch what new innovation hubs emerge from the pandemic.” – Pete Flint, General Partner, NFX
“A new generation of smart builders are going to continue to come to the Bay Area! Those who are ready to rest and vest with their big paydays don’t want to pay seven to nine figures in taxes, but those at the beginning of their career who are just getting started will now have the housing and commercial real estate space to spawn a new renaissance. The artists might even come back. This is fanned by the fact that Big Tech is going remote.” – Garry Tan, founder and managing partner, Initialized Capital
“Once the COVID pandemic is brought under control, urban areas will recover, and the largest beneficiaries will be companies that can get back to a working environment that fosters collaboration. Also, younger employees/college graduates who are still trying to set their career trajectories will gain a significant advantage over those who opted to stay out of the US’s major economic hubs.” – Jordan Nof, co-founder and managing partner, Tusk Ventures
But many will leave cities. As a result, towns and startups all over America will reshape
“People’s transportation needs have also shifted this year, especially with the move to remote working. Transportation trends will also see a major change in the new year. Sensors and A.I. tech will see increased support that will help will traffic congestion prediction, pedestrian flows and parking patterns. People impacted by the pandemic will seek local routes and access businesses closer to home. Also, transit-oriented developments are on the rise, which will make American cities resemble European cities.” – Wyatt Jenkins, SVP of product, Procore
“More broadly, space is going to be used in a dramatically different way. There will be a massive rationalization of the second largest cost of all organizations: real estate… Hospitals will have more room for beds whereas corporations will adopt new workplace layouts that increase collaboration while also maintaining capacity requirements (for now). And when we look at higher education, the move to online classes will radically upend their real estate footprint in the next 12 to 18 months…. A huge reckoning is coming to commercial real estate and it’s going to be something to keep a close eye on.” – Kurt von Koch, CEO, FM:Systems
“More startups will focus on the home, particularly the suburbs. Think about what DoorDash did for suburban food delivery. We will start to see disruption of traditional services (e.g. landscaping, cleaning, pool maintenance).” – Michael Goland, vice president of business operations and strategy at Founder Shield
“The big brand fast food stops are likely to de-densify their walk-in locations and convert existing locations to delivery only. We’ll see a transformation in the real estate footprint. With urban passenger traffic nose diving, ride sharing companies will pivot investments in home delivery – driving consolidation in the restaurant delivery business, as well as accelerating growth of on-demand delivery of food, groceries and more.” – Todd Klein, partner, Revolution Growth
Valuations will come back down to earth
“We’ll see valuations start to return closer to something normal in the public markets towards the latter half of next year, and this will have an impact on private market valuations as well. To put it in perspective, the valuation multiples for high growth publicly-traded [software and subscription] companies have expanded quite a bit in 2020. This has continued to buoy valuations in the private markets we play in. If you didn’t know there was a pandemic going on, we’d be saying we were at peak bubble for promising companies that are raising competitive rounds.” – Don Butler, managing director, Thomvest Ventures
“We will need to adjust to a rough correction in capital market valuations as earnings multiples will ultimately need to come in-line with COVID and post-COVID economic realities.” – Matthew Cowan, general partner, Next47
“As we return from the pandemic and there is rotation of dollars from tech to travel, hospitality and energy sectors hurt by the pandemic, we will see 2021 multiples return to normal yet healthy levels (20-25x forward revenues).” – Dharmesh Thakker, general partner, Battery Ventures
SPACS continue to raise, but some will struggle to find a good acquisition
“SPACs are going to get very competitive and it will be hard for them to find good assets to buy. If some of the early ones underperform it will be hard for the trend to sustain. The best companies and brands will explore the SPAC option but if companies are good enough to do traditional IPO or direct listing, they will likely do that over the SPAC option.” – Mitchell Green, founding and managing partner, Lead Edge Capital
“SPACs, which felt like a bubble in early 2020, become a mainstream way to go public. Some ‘science project’ SPACs are brilliant and some are embarrassing failures.” –Greg Sands, founder and managing partner, Costanoa Ventures
“The overhang from 2020’s spate of SPACs will hit in 2021. SPACs sucked attention away from classic IPOs last year, but next year, the IPO market will return to a more classic structure and give SPACs some competition. We’ll see more capital that can be deployed in more ways, providing good alternatives for entrepreneurs to grow and finance their companies.” – Jason Green, founder and general partner, Emergence Capital
Offices come back, to varying degrees
“The death of office culture and the allure of remote working has been massively overstated. Sure, we want to hang onto some flexibility; but employees at companies of all sizes that have been remote this year are hungering for the connection of their peers and longing to feel the togetherness that’s borne from a shared mission.” Nicole Johnson, partner, Forerunner Ventures
“The future of work is hybrid. Many digital knowledge workers will have the freedom to decide how many days a week they want to work in the office and to choose flexible working hours rather than the traditional 9am-5pm. Some employers may lead the way as Google has done recently with their plan for 3 ‘collaboration days’ a week in the office and allowing employees to work at home for 2 days a week. I expect we will also see an increase in project-based work vs. role-based or full-time work creating opportunities for a broader set of people to participate in the labor force.” – Sarah Cannon, partner, Index Ventures.
“HR tech will have a huge year in 2021 as companies take their savings from reduced office footprint and plow it into software to improve employee engagement. Companies that slashed costs during the coronavirus are experiencing huge margin expansion and are going to Zoom in 2021 (this is already happening).” – Spencer Rascoff, Zillow co-founder and former CEO
At-home healthcare tech and mental health care will boom
“The pandemic made health innovation a hot category to invest in, and in 2021, we’ll see ‘Family Health’ emerge as the next big category in healthcare. Employers saw the challenges facing working parents head on this year as their children quite literally came into view, along with the realization that the definition of supporting parent employees spans far beyond healthcare for dependents.” – Sarahjane Sacchetti, CEO, Cleo.
“There will be a rise in startups that better address the needs of the modern, tech-savvy older population, challenging long-standing institutions like the AARP, and we’ll see players like Amazon going into more aspects of people’s personal and medical lives to further amplify a massive ambition around owning the market for cloud-driven telehealth services.” –Michael Bloch, CEO, Pillar
“When the calendar flips at the end of the month, I think there will be a bigger push on technology in the home, in regards to our health.” –Ambar Bhattacharyya, managing director, Maverick Ventures
“Emotional wellbeing has emerged as an acute issue among clinicians during COVID-19, as staff are absorbing the stress and emotional toll of working long hours and rising death tolls. And as a result, many Chief Nurse Officers may be considering departures or retirement once the pandemic comes to a close. If healthcare leaders can effectively identify high-performing nurse managers and nurture and develop their leadership skills early on, the new generation of healthcare leadership will already be prepared to lead when the time comes.” – Nanne Finis, chief nurse executive, UKG
Though it will come with its own regulatory and safety issues
“There will be a continued increase in the numbers of people looking to take advantage of these services as it’s become a popular and safe option for many. But as the number of telemedicine offerings on the market continues to grow, hospitals and customers need to be wary of the quality of the experiences they provide and the guidance they deliver.” – Michael Niddam, managing partner at Kamet Ventures
Investors also see promise in chips, video-based shopping, and quantum computing
“In 2021 there will be renewed interest in ‘GovTech.’ This is due to a combination of factors including Palantir’s successful public offering, the rapid growth of new government focused unicorns such as Anduril, and an expectation that there will be another round of stimulus that can create opportunities for American venture-backed startups.” – Sri Chandrasekar, partner, Point72 Ventures
“More big consumers of chips, i.e., hyperscalers, car companies, consumer electronics companies will acquire semiconductor companies. Expect lots of chip M&A. Chips will be the differentiators of products and companies, rather than just another component.” – Shahin Farshchi, Partner, Lux Capital
“Despite the pandemic, the future for consumer investments in 2021 is looking bright. With the world on lockdown, many of us have become voracious online shoppers. Video based shopping is a trend that’s already huge in China and we think 2021 could be the year that we see breakout activity in that space here in the U.S.” – Saar Gur, general partner, CRV
“The immense computational power that quantum computing can unleash will lead to life-changing medicines, more accurate weather forecasts, smarter AIs, longer-lasting batteries, safer space travel, sustainable energy sources, and benefits society has yet to even discover.” – David Cowan, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
And that will come with an increased need for cybersecurity and privacy
“The vulnerabilities exposed by COVID and this latest Russian cyberattack will forcibly retire the traditional security framework… In 2021 we’ll see broad, rapid adoption of ‘zero trust’ security frameworks that constantly verify users and devices at every entry point and grant limited access only to specifically permitted resources. After years of languishing on long-term wish lists, zero trust implementations will leapfrog their way to the top of IT roadmaps.” – Gene Frantz, general partner, CapitalG
“2020 marked the beginning of new privacy preserving algorithms such as differential privacy starting to be encoded into software. In 2021, software developers will more easily be able to preserve user privacy without sacrificing personalization or accuracy. It will be interesting to see which companies and products are be able to use this new privacy balance as a competitive weapon against incumbents.” – Matt Hartman, partner, Betaworks Ventures
Fintech investments will need to address the wealth gap
“Social debt is building: Although during the pandemic many of the top wealth in America has grown, there is a large mass of retail, hospitality, food service and other in-person workers who have been displaced and are out of work with debt building. This increasing unemployment, underemployment, and homelessness will take a long time to recover, and we are building a nationwide debt socially and financially with these individuals that will need to be paid.” – Mike Jones, managing director, Science Inc.
“The pandemic accelerated and sharpened two long-standing trends: the erosion of faith in traditional institutions and growing inequality, in particular between the professional and working classes. There is enormous potential for fintechs to fill the gaps in trust and wealth that likely will continue to widen over the coming year.” Ryan Falvey and Tyler Griffin, managing partners, Financial Venture Studio
“In consumer fintech, we will see increased attention to Black and minority communities. At the current moment, these communities are still a drastically underserved market despite the early attention. There are many products and services that could serve the needs of the community but are not known to the community.” – Jillian Williams, principal, Anthemis
2021 could be one of the hottest years for M&A and IPOs
“We will see more M&A. The M&A market is strong – when the IPO market is hot, more tech companies are buying. Big tech companies have cash hordes, that they can use across the board to beef up product lines and gain relevance in areas where they did not have it… This year’s IPO market is still a tiny dent in the number of companies that are realistic IPO candidates.” – Sandy Miller, general partner, IVP
” We will likely see one of most robust M&A environments ever. The surge of venture backed IPOs has left many businesses with war chests at same time. Will see Slootman (Snowflake)/Chesky (Airbnb)/Xu (DoorDash) play the capital allocation game.” – Chris Brown, principal, Inspired Capital
Cloud, fintech, healthcare, and product management will see big buys—while some others will stumble
“2021 will be an epic year tech M&A. We are in the early innings of cloud migration. Google Cloud, Microsoft or Vmware will acquire Hashi in 2021. Another large acquisition would be Google Cloud acquires Confluent… There’s going to be a wave of acquisitions in the security space… Many tuck-in acquisitions by Crowdstrike, Palo Alto, Zscaler.” – Baris Aksoy
“If we look at the business to business tech space, the heat is on in the product management space. Atlassian might look to get into it by buying Pendo… Microsoft or Adobe might look at companies such as Invision or Figma.” -Andy MacMillan, CEO of UserTesting
“I imagine we will see Teladoc, American Well or even MDLive continue their expansion and seek to deepen their reach… by merging or acquiring companies like Zipnosis for full virtual care, 20/20Now (ocular telehealth specialty), 3Derm for dermatologists, or Aligned Telehealth for behavioral healthcare staffing programs.” – Darin Brannan, CEO, ClearDATA.
“Microsoft buys Akami.” – Bill Mahoney
“Compass’ IPO will underperform when investors value the company as a tech-enabled services business instead of the software company that Softbank treated it as.” – Sarah Liu, vice president, Fifth Wall Ventures
“DoorDash falls below $100 by July.” – Jerry Chen
“SoftBank Vision Fund 2 closes at another $100 billion.” – Chet
“Fintech M&A is going to be on fire next year, and will be fascinating to see who is the first to get acquired at the start of the year. Stripe may become one of the most active CVC’s for emerging market Fintech… Goldman Sachs’ Marcus will launch their robo-advisor product, and it will be very interesting to see the adoption vs. Wells Fargo, SoFi, and Betterment.” – Cody Barbo, founder and CEO, Trust & Will
Travel and entertainment gets a comeback
“As the vaccine reaches a sizable part of the US.. population, business travel will come roaring back. All it will take for companies to change their travel policy is to lose an important deal or two to a competitor who visited in-person to close the deal. We all crave human interaction and for many of us, trust and relationships are built in-person.” – Arif Janmohamed, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners
“Consumer spend in categories such as travel, fashion, restaurant dining, out of home entertainment and personal grooming will come roaring back as the pandemic eases in the second half of 2021. This will be particularly true for goods and services catering to the more affluent demographics least affected by pandemic job losses.” – Patricia Nakache, general partner, Trinity Ventures.
But maybe not to pre-pandemic levels
“Even once the vaccine is fully deployed, we will still not see business travel ever come back to pre-pandemic levels. However, vacation travel will skyrocket in 2021 due to pent up-demand and it will be common for professionals to travel and work remotely from desirable places for weeks (or months) at a time.” – David Thacker, general partner, Greylock
Funding to women and minorities continue to lag, but investors take note
“Inequity in venture capital funding persists despite the issue being in the spotlight and many efforts to combat it. Venture capital funding going to women entrepreneurs stagnated over the last year at around 12%. Women own just 11% of founder and employee equity in start-ups, according to a study conducted by Carta… This will take time to correct as remedies must address the fundamental and structural issues that underpin the problem. But, in the near term, there will be new solutions and investment vehicles that emerge to address the deficit in funding for these minority groups, including fund of funds.” – Leah Solivan, general partner, Fuel Capital
“[There will be] more funding toward women and BIPOC founders in earlier stages.” – Carine Carmy, CEO, Origin


fortune--2020-12-18--Counting down the highlights and lowlights in tech of 2020

Ready for 2021? As you track the milestones leading up to the end of this terrible year, here’s one: This is the last Data Sheet for 2020, as we are not publishing for the next two weeks. I’ll be recharging during a stirring staycation in Boston with immediate family and our snow-loving dog Luna:
But before you go, here are some highlights of the newsletter this year.
Among the five most-read essays by Data Sheet subscribers was Danielle’s piece about Netflix capturing the most Oscar nominations (spoiler alert: It only won two. Laura Dern in Marriage Story won best supporting actress and American Factory was the best documentary).
Robert had two, the top two overall, in fact. His piece about the hacking of Jeff Bezos’ phone was exceeded only by his piece about Iran’s cyberattack capabilities in the wake of the U.S. drone strike killing Qassem Suleimani.
Rounding out the top five were a piece I wrote about Sony’s buzzy but unreal electric car (“a car no one will ever drive”) and a pretty tough assessment of Ginni Rometty’s tenure at IBM.
All of our essays were greatly improved by our newsletter editor Karen Yuan, who’s especially clever at writing the subject lines. Data Sheet readers seemed most eager to read the newsletter in the beginning of the year, before the whole COVID thing, which was when Adam was working on his San Francisco feature story.
We also post every newsletter on fortune.com and the most popular issues among web readers were quite different. Adam snagged three of the top five with his essays about the pandemic’s economic damage, Amazon’s policy of selling anti-vaccine books, and an explanation of scooter startup Bird’s $2.5 billion valuation. Only two essays did better than those on the web. My August piece about MIT’s deep-fake moon landing speech and Robert’s recent scoop that well-known investor Keith Rabois was abandoning the Bay Area.
The newsletter is also about bringing you the must-reads across the tech landscape. Here are the five most-read links of the year:
And we always try to leave you with something a little fun at the end of the newsletter. The favorite of the year in that department was this amazing video put together at the Juilliard School when the pandemic was just getting started. Here’s to a 2021 filled with more brilliant music! See you next year.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Hello darkness my old friend. The recent hacking incident against the U.S. government is coming to be known as the SolarWinds attack, after the security company whose widely-used software allowed the penetrations. And it's also turning out to be much bigger than initially realized. The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains America’s nuclear stockpile, was among the many agencies penetrated. You know who was hit but not penetrated though? Microsoft. Or so the software giant maintains: Though it detected the malware in its systems, "We have not found evidence of access to production services or customer data. Our investigations, which are ongoing, have found absolutely no indications that our systems were used to attack others.”
A marathon not a sprint. After running in place for about a year, Google finally got permission from the European Union to complete its $2 billion acquisition of Fitbit. Google agreed to maintain access for 10 years for competing health and fitness apps, among other conditions, in order to secure the approval. Speaking of regulators, Google did in fact get hit with a third antitrust lawsuit. This one is led by the AGs in Colorado and Iowa and focuses on how Google may have hurt specialty rivals like Yelp. Google called the latest case “meritless” and “inaccurate.” The company also posted a long response that's worth reading if you are following the cases. One key argument: The latest lawsuit "suggests we shouldn't have worked to make Search better and that we should, in fact, be less useful to you."
You've been a lovely, lovely witness. While on the subject of lawsuits, the judge overseeing Epic Games v Apple says Tim Apple (aka CEO Tim Cook) and Apple SVP Craig Federighi must testify. The trial isn't expected to start for another six months or more. In other video gaming news, Sony pulled the buggy and controversial new game Cyberpunk 2077 from its Playstation Store and said it would issue refunds to any buyers who want one.
We have so much in common. Some changes afoot at Twitter. The company is dropping the goofy quote tweet prompt every time you try to retweet something. Also, Twitter is testing what it calls "humanization prompts" which will show what a user has in common with someone they are about to reply to (such as "You and Maria both follow the topics soccer, dogs, and rap"). And the company is experimenting with a voice chat room feature called Spaces with a focus on marginalized communities.
You have mad skillz dawg. Despite a lack of Wish fulfillment, the IPO market remains pretty hot. A.I. lending company Upstart's stock nearly doubled in its debut and mobile esports company Skillz merged with a SPAC and saw its stock promptly jump 29% on Thursday. And the pipeline continues to fill. Fancy pre-owned clothing market Poshmark filed to go public as did cryptocurrency conglomerate Coinbase and automation software specialist UiPath. Popular messaging app Discord raised $100 million from private investors at a valuation of $7 billion, saying its monthly active user base doubled over the past year to 140 million.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Apparently some Air Force techies are as much fans of Star Wars as Peter Thiel's crowd loves Lord of the Rings. The Air Force tested an A.I. pilot in a U-2 spy plane this week called ARTUµ. Get it? R2-D2? Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Will Roper explained to Popular Mechanics how A.I. fits into the modern battlefield.
The fact ARTUµ was in command was less about any particular mission than how completely our military must embrace AI to maintain the battlefield decision advantage. Unlike Han Solo’s “never-tell-me-the-odds” snub of C-3PO’s asteroid field survival rate (approximately 3,720 to 1), our warfighters need to know the odds in dizzyingly-complex combat scenarios. Teaming with trusted AI across all facets of conflict—even occasionally putting it in charge—could tip those odds in our favor.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
Matt Drudge Logs Off (Tablet)
The Drudge Report has become a conformist shadow of its formerly bratty, oppositional self. Why?
The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men (Sixth Tone)
In China, a sassy chat bot is stealing millions of men’s hearts. It’s also recording their most intimate desires and emotions.
What If You Could Do It All Over? (The New Yorker)
The uncanny allure of our unlived lives.
How Serena Williams conquers her daily schedule without breaking a sweat (Fast Company)
The athlete and investor shares tricks and apps that help her stay ahead of her competition—and her calendar.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Citron calls this the ‘most ridiculous’ IPO of 2020 By Lee Clifford
GitHub CEO: We’re nuking all tracking ‘cookies’ and you should too By Robert Hackett
Ahead of an IPO, Robinhood agrees to pay $65 million to settle SEC charges By Lucinda Shen
Why investors jumped on board the SPAC ‘gravy train’ By Emma Hinchliffe
Creating a unified society is up to all of us By Sandra Phillips Rogers
Innovation just isn’t happening over Zoom By Tarun Wadhwa
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
For the last issue of the year, let's go out on a super sweet note. Please enjoy this Tweeted story of a good neighbor, a fairy garden, and the exchange of beautiful hand-written notes. And like the fairy Sapphire requests: Be kind and brave. It's almost 2021.


fortune--2020-12-18--The Broadsheet’s 2020 Year in Review

The Broadsheet’s 2020 Year in Review

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! Rep. Deb Haaland is a historic Cabinet nominee, Anita Hill’s Hollywood Commission issues its final report, and we look back on 2020 (we swear it’s not all bad). TGIF.
– The bright spots of 2020. In the coming days and weeks, you may finally have a moment to stop and reflect on a year that defies description. What will you remember?
This is the last Broadsheet before our annual holiday hiatus, so we’re taking an opportunity to look back too.
In many ways, this is a year we’d like to forget, since it dealt blow after blow to the community The Broadsheet serves: working women. If you can believe it, early 2020 saw women outnumber men on U.S. payrolls for only the second time ever, as they held 50.4% of jobs. That happened in mid-January, and it’s fair to say things went downhill—quickly—from there.
The pandemic increased women’s caregiving duties and dimmed their career prospects. If women didn’t lose their jobs, they thought about quitting as the pandemic dragged on and the demands they faced went from bad to worse. Already trailing their male peers in so many ways, women became subject to new deficits—from a COVID-era ambition gap to the ‘kid-interruption’ gap. (Working moms, we wholeheartedly salute you.)
And then the world lost a titan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose legacy is, in part, the more equal workplace American women occupy today.
But even with all that downright awfulness, there was good—so much good—that also shaped 2020.
We could easily start and end with frontline healthcare workers, who are disproportionately female, and who risked their lives by charging into understaffed and under-resourced hospitals to save strangers from a pathogen we still don’t fully understand. They are now rightfully first to receive the early vaccines that rely on new technology that women helped develop, with an assist from—who else?—Dolly Parton.
In the early days of the pandemic, you, Broadsheet readers, taught each other how to stay productive, how to stress less, how to pass the time. A startup CEO told us how she fundraised while quarantining with six children, and a newspaper editor shared how she kept up with an erratic news cycle while helping her seven kids learn from home.
When racial justice protests gripped the U.S., members of the Broadsheet community called out the shortcomings of allyship efforts, and Black women shared with us their candid perspectives on racism at work. Female athletes—from WNBA players to Naomi Osaka—used their platforms to support the Black Lives Matter movement and honor the victims of police brutality.
And then there were the firsts. The first female vice president-elect. The first female Wall Street bank CEO. The first female GM in the MLB. Women chief executives are still woefully underrepresented in the Fortune 500, but they hit a record high—37—this year in the midst of a crisis.
There’s no way to sugarcoat 2020, but it is worth remembering the bright spots that offset all the darkness.
Every single one of these story lines will follow us into 2021: How will women fare in (what we hope is) a vaccine-induced economic recovery? Will governments and employers finally take steps to reduce the enormous childcare burden that women bear? Will the allyship that individuals and corporations pledged this summer result in more respectful, more equitable workplaces? How will a Vice President Kamala Harris shape the Biden administration? And will the streak of female CEO hires continue?
We’re looking forward to answering those questions in 2021—and to fewer gaps and more firsts; to progress.
Happy holidays and a very happy New Year. The Broadsheet will be back on Monday, Jan. 4.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- A historic choice. It's official: President-elect Joe Biden has selected Rep. Deb Haaland as his nominee for Secretary of the Interior. Haaland would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary—a milestone that's especially meaningful as she'll be overseeing tribal land and Indigenous education. Washington Post
- Listen up. On the latest episode of the Fortune Brainstorm, hosts Michal Lev-Ram and Brian O'Keefe speak to IPO expert Lise Buyer, who helped craft Google's auction in 2004, and Threshold Ventures managing partner Emily Melton about the unusual year for both the public markets and venture. Fortune's Maria Aspan also joined to share more insight on her feature, "Female Founders Under Fire." Fortune
- Winter wonderland? The invisible labor that often falls to women multiplies around the holidays, from planning special meals to buying and wrapping gifts. Women reflect on how they're feeling about those tasks during an emotional holiday season. The 19th*
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Cloudflare promoted cofounder and COO Michelle Zatlyn to president. Capitol One chief audit officer Celia Edwards Karam joins Zola's board as its first independent director. NetApp hired Gerri Mason Hall as VP of diversity, inclusion and belonging. Americares hired the Breast Cancer Research Foundation's Stephanie Kauffman as deputy development director, strategic partnerships.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Court case. FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is back in front of the Supreme Court for a second time—and this time Justice Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court to hear it. The case is about access to medication abortion during the pandemic. Vox
- Hill's Hollywood. Anita Hill's Hollywood Commission for Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality issued its final report on the industry's culture. Less than half of the 10,000 people surveyed believe that the entertainment industry really values diversity and inclusion. Variety
- Game on. Designers, voice actors, and players are fighting for inclusion in video games. Designer Emilia Schatz, designer Rosa Carbo-Mascarell, and voice actor Sarah Elmaleh are among those pushing for change. New York Times
ON MY RADAR
‘There simply isn’t the trust’: The fight to overcome vaccine skepticism in the Black community Fortune
How Savannah Guthrie and Kristen Welker won the 2020 election coverage Vogue
In tackling the country’s biggest problems, Biden and Harris need to prioritize gender and racial equity Fortune
PARTING WORDS
"You don’t have to be a king or a queen. You don’t have to be someone up high. He has infused importance into our lives, even if we didn’t make it into a history book."
-Viola Davis on August Wilson's play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She stars with the late Chadwick Boseman in a new Netflix adaptation out today.


fortune--2020-12-18--Coronavirus is hitting prisons and jails hard—1 in 5 inmates has had COVID, and 1,700 have died

One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times higher than the general population. In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.
As the pandemic enters its 10th month — and as the first Americans begin to receive a long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine — at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected, more than 1,700 have died and the spread of the virus behind bars shows no sign of slowing. New cases in prisons this week reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, far outstripping previous peaks in April and August.
“That number is a vast undercount,” said Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Venters has conducted more than a dozen court-ordered COVID-19 prison inspections around the country. “I still encounter prisons and jails where, when people get sick, not only are they not tested but they don’t receive care. So they get much sicker than need be,” he said.
Now the rollout of vaccines poses difficult decisions for politicians and policymakers. As the virus spreads largely unchecked behind bars, prisoners can’t social distance and are dependent on the state for their safety and well-being.
This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and The Marshall Project exploring the state of the prison system in the coronavirus pandemic.
Donte Westmoreland, 26, was recently released from Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas, where he caught the virus while serving time on a marijuana charge. Some 5,100 prisoners have become infected in Kansas prisons, the third-highest COVID-19 rate in the country, behind only South Dakota and Arkansas.
“It was like I was sentenced to death,” Westmoreland said.
Westmoreland lived with more than 100 virus-infected men in an open dorm, where he woke up regularly to find men sick on the floor, unable to get up on their own, he said.
‘Dying in front of me’
“People are actually dying in front of me off of this virus,” he said. “It’s the scariest sight.” Westmoreland said he sweated it out, shivering in his bunk until, six weeks later, he finally recovered.
Half of the prisoners in Kansas have been infected with COVID-19 — eight times the rate of cases among the state’s overall population. Eleven prisoners have died, including five at the prison where Westmoreland was held. Of the three prison employees who have died in Kansas, two worked at Lansing Correctional Facility.
In Arkansas, where more than 9,700 prisoners have tested positive and 50 have died, four of every seven have had the virus, the second-highest prison infection rate in the U.S.
Among the dead was 29-year-old Derick Coley, who was serving a 20-year sentence at the Cummins Unit maximum security prison. Cece Tate, Coley’s girlfriend, said she last talked with him on April 10 when he said he was sick and showing symptoms of the virus.
“It took forever for me to get information,” she said. The prison finally told her on April 20 that Coley had tested positive for the virus. Less than two weeks later, a prison chaplain called on May 2 to tell her Coley had died.
The couple had a daughter who turned 9 in July. “She cried and was like, ‘My daddy can’t send me a birthday card,'” Tate said. “She was like, ‘Momma, my Christmas ain’t going to be the same.'”
Patchy prison data
Nearly every prison system in the country has seen infection rates significantly higher than the communities around them. In facilities run by the federal Bureau of Prisons, one of every five prisoners has had coronavirus. Twenty-four state prison systems have had even higher rates.
Prison workers have also been disproportionately affected. In North Dakota, four of every five prison staff has gotten coronavirus. Nationwide, it’s one in five.
Not all states release how many prisoners they’ve tested, but states that test prisoners broadly and regularly may appear to have higher case rates than states that don’t.
Infection rates as of Tuesday were calculated by the AP and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system, based on data collected weekly in prisons since March. Infection and mortality rates may be even higher, since nearly every prison system has significantly fewer prisoners today than when the pandemic began, so rates represent a conservative estimate based on the largest known population.
Yet, as vaccine campaigns get underway, there has been pushback in some states against giving the shots to people in prisons early.
“There’s no way it’s going to go to prisoners … before it goes to the people who haven’t committed any crime,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told reporters earlier this month after his state’s initial vaccine priority plans put prisoners before the general public.
Like more than a dozen states, Kansas’s vaccination plan does not mention prisoners or corrections staff, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-partisan prison data think tank. Seven states put prisoners near the front of the line, along with others living in crowded settings like nursing homes and long-term care facilities. An additional 19 states have placed prisoners in the second phase of their vaccine rollouts.
Racial disparities in the nation’s criminal justice system compound the disproportionate toll the pandemic has taken on communities of color. Black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites. They are also disproportionately likely to be infected and hospitalized with COVID-19, and are more likely than other races to have a family member or close friend who has died of the virus.
The pandemic “increases risk for those who are already at risk,” said David J. Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
This week, a Council on Criminal Justice task force headed by former attorneys general Alberto Gonzalez and Loretta Lynch released a report calling for scaling back prison populations, improving communication with public health departments and reporting better data.
Prison facilities are often overcrowded and poorly ventilated. Dormitory-style housing, cafeterias and open-bar cell doors make it nearly impossible to quarantine. Prison populations are sicker, on average, than the general population and health care behind bars is notoriously substandard.
Nationwide, the mortality rate for COVID-19 among prisoners is 45% higher than the overall rate.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, public health experts called for widespread prison releases as the best way to curb virus spread behind bars. In October, the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering released a report urging states to empty their prisons of anyone who was medically vulnerable, nearing the end of their sentence or of low risk to public safety.
But releases have been slow and uneven. In the first three months of the pandemic, more than 10,000 federal prisoners applied for compassionate release. Wardens denied or did not respond to almost all those requests, approving only 156 — less than 2%.
A plan to thin the state prison population in New Jersey, first introduced in June, was held up in the Legislature because of inadequate funding to help those who were released. About 2,200 prisoners with less than a year left to serve were ultimately released in November, eight months after the pandemic began.
California used a similar strategy to release 11,000 people since March. But state prisons stopped accepting new prisoners from county jails at several points during the pandemic, which simply shifted the burden to the jails. According to the state corrections agency, more than 8,000 people are now waiting in California’s county jails, which are also coronavirus hot spots.
“We call that ‘screwing county,'” said John Wetzel, Pennsylvania’s secretary of corrections, whose prison system has one of the lower COVID-19 case rates in the country, with one in every seven prisoners infected. But that’s still more than three times the statewide rate.
Prison walls are porous even during a pandemic, with corrections officers and other employees traveling in and out each day.
“The interchange between communities and prisons and jails has always been there, but in the context of COVID-19 it’s never been more clear,” said Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, a professor of social medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill who studies incarceration and health. “We have to stop thinking about them as a place apart.”
Wetzel said Pennsylvania’s prisons have kept virus rates relatively low by widely distributing masks in mid-March — weeks before even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending them for everyday use in public — and demanding that staff and prisoners use them properly and consistently. But prisoners and advocates say prevention measures on the ground are uneven, regardless of Wetzel’s good intentions.
As the country heads into winter with virus infections on the rise, experts caution that unless COVID-19 is brought under control behind bars, the country will not get it under control in the population at large.
“If we are going to end this pandemic — bring down infection rates, bring down death rates, bring down ICU occupancy rates — we have to address infection rates in correctional facilities,” said Emily Wang, professor at Yale School of Medicine and co-author of the recent National Academies report.
“Infections and deaths are extraordinarily high. These are wards of the state, and we have to contend with it.”