Like so many other workers around the world affected by a COVID-19 lockdown, the team of scientists that operates the U.S. space agency (NASA) probe Curiosity — currently on the surface of Mars — has been forced to do its work from home. Since March 20, the team, normally based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, has been forced to direct the rover while working separately from their homes. Programming each sequence of actions for the rover may involve 20 or so people developing and testing commands in one place while chatting with dozens of others located elsewhere. In anticipation of what they would need to make that happen from home, the team assembled headsets, monitors and other equipment in advanced.  Some adaptations were needed as well. Rover operators rely on special three-dimensional goggles to help them drive Curiosity over the Martian landscape. But those can only be run using JPL computers, so researchers were forced to rely on simple 3D glasses, similar to the kind you might get at a 3D movie, to view images on laptops. The team found that it could do its job using multiple video conferences and messaging apps. Two days after they set up remotely, the team directed Curiosity to drill for a rock sample at a Martian location called “Edinburgh.” Science operations team chief Carrie Bridge says she still checks in on the team to make sure things are running smoothly, but does so virtually, calling into as many as four videoconferences at the same time.  
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When COVID-19 hit Washington, D.C., and health officials said people had to stay 2 meters apart, Broad Branch Market owner Tracy Stannard knew it meant an end to business as usual.Customers had been packing the store to stock up.”We realized that it was getting a little too risky to have so many people in the market,” Stannard said. “We wanted to keep people outside.”But she also wanted to keep selling groceries.So she turned to Starship Technologies’ delivery robots.”The bots seemed like a great option,” she said.At a time when human contact is considered a health hazard, robots may be more useful than ever. Though their potential is huge, robots are not quite ready to take on the role, experts said.WATCH: Delivery robotsSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – A six-wheeled ground delivery robot from Starship Technologies shares the sidewalk with pedestrians at DuPont Circle in Washington, Feb. 20, 2017.But they’re a help, she added. Without them, “it would be harder. I would be driving a lot, for sure.”And customers appreciate that the bots let them keep their distance.”I love the fact that it’ll come right to my house and that I don’t even have to go into the store,” customer Rob Okum said. “It’s actually super easy and it makes it a lot safer to keep social distancing.”Elsewhere, Starship’s robots are delivering restaurant takeout. Other companies, including Kiwibot, Postmates and, of course, Amazon, are also doing various kinds of robot deliveries.Though this seems like an opportune moment, automated deliveries are not taking off.”There’s a lot of use for robotics right now, but I’m not seeing a tremendous growth in that particular application,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the trade group Association for Advancing Automation.Robot deliveries are only available in a few small areas where the sidewalks and streets aren’t too bumpy and the local authorities don’t mind letting them share the pavement. There are also plenty of other ways to have stuff delivered, Burnstein said.Dirty and dangerousRobots have always been best-suited for dirty and dangerous work, he said, and the COVID-19 pandemic is providing some new opportunities.Disinfecting robots are zapping germs in a Belgian hospital and spraying disinfectant in the Hong Kong subway.”If you are in a hospital or office or a warehouse, you probably would like to have a robot do the disinfecting so that people don’t have to go in there and do that,” Burnstein said. “(The robot) makes it safe before the people come into work.”Robots are helping health workers stay healthy by limiting their interactions with sick patients.They are delivering food and medicine in India and Thailand.In Italy, a robot with a camera and touchscreen sits by a patient’s bedside, keeping an eye on them so nurses can keep their distance. Limited applicationsBut these remain isolated examples. Experts say robots could be doing much more.”There’s so much potential you can do here,” Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Howie Choset said. “Unfortunately, we have not had the resources to develop robots that are needed for this particular pandemic.”Choset said interest in developing tools waxes and wanes with the latest crisis. For example, he said, his research group developed a snake-like robot that could move through tight spaces to search for victims in collapsed buildings. It helped the Red Cross in Mexico City after the 2017 earthquake.”But we were doing that on a shoestring budget. That robot, no pun intended, was on its last legs” until the earthquake hit, he said. Then, “everybody wanted that robot. And then a couple of weeks after that, people forgot.”Choset said the robot needs more work, but it’s been hard to find the funding.It’s not just academics. The robotics industry as a whole is struggling.”I’m seeing robotics companies shut down, even in the last month, but particularly in the last year, because they were too early for the markets,” said Andra Keay, managing director of trade group Silicon Valley Robotics.Investors are looking for big returns fast, but many companies are not making money yet. It may be 10 or 15 years before they perfect their technology and business models.”We really needed patient capital in this new wave of robotics,” she said.For now, however, these futuristic workers remain in the future.”Yes, this is robots’ moment,” Choset said, “but we’re going to make do with what we have.” 
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At a time when human contact is considered a health hazard, robots may be more useful than ever. From helping with the shopping to keeping healthcare workers safe, the COVID-19 pandemic could be the moment for robots to shine. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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U.S. lawmakers and rights groups are raising concerns about privacy protections and civil liberties as health authorities study China, South Korea and other nations for insights into deploying big data in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.  So far, the United States has made limited use of available data to fight the outbreak. Instead of using cell phone location data to track down individuals exposed to the virus, public health officials have relied on such data to monitor trends and hot spots.  But once the number of new COVID-19 cases levels off and the Trump administration and governors move to lift lockdowns and other social distancing measures, the contact tracing techniques used with varying degrees of success in other countries are likely to gain currency in the U.S.   
 
Contact tracing is a public health procedure of identifying people who have come into contact with an infected person and follow-up gathering of additional information on these people.   Jennifer Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said contact tracing could be useful when testing for exposure to the virus becomes  more widely available. But she warned that any use of phone records must be transparent and voluntary, and the data must be destroyed once the crisis is over.“When data collection is useful for an important public good, we have to make sure we can protect privacy as much as possible and get effective use of the tool or the data,” Granick said during a press call with reporters last week.  In the two years since the European Union implemented a landmark privacy regulation known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers have been pressing for similar protections for American consumers. Now, the heightened focus on the use of data in the fight against the COVID-19 virus has pushed concerns about privacy protections to the forefront.  Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.On Thursday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation convened the first congressional “paper hearing” via the internet on big data and the coronavirus. In his opening statement, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee chairman, said any use of personal data must come with privacy protections.  
 
“Reducing privacy risks begins with understanding how consumers’ location data — and any other information — is being collected when tracking compliance with social distancing measures,” Wicker said. “Equally important is understanding how that data is anonymized to remove all personally identifiable information and prevent individuals from being re-identified.”Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State, the top Democrat on the panel, warned against “hasty decisions that will sweep up massive, unrelated datasets.” “And we must guard against vaguely defined and non-transparent government initiatives with our personal data,” Cantwell said.  “Because rights and data surrendered temporarily during an emergency can become very difficult to get back.” Last year, both Wicker and Cantwell introduced privacy bills that would give American consumers privacy protections similar to the EU’s GDPR.  
 
The U.S. drive to make greater use of cell phone location data to contain the virus stems in part from similar efforts in China, South Korea, Singapore, Israel and elsewhere.  People wearing face masks look at their cellphones at Beijing Capital International Airport, as the country is hit by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Beijing, China March 16, 2020.In China, the government collected cell phone location data on millions of residents with the goal of identifying individuals exposed to a person infected with the virus.  Using the infected people’s location records, the government then identified, tested and, if necessary, quarantined people.   This was one of several methods China used to bring the virus outbreak under control.  “This kind of tracking is part of what China has been doing in its seemingly successful effort to suppress the virus, which has fed the appeal of such tracking,” the ACLU said in a white paper released last week.  In the paper, the ACLU highlighted several problems with this method.For one, cell site location information and GPS data are not accurate enough to pinpoint whether two people were recently in “close contact” with each other.    As the Chinese discovered, cell site location data “generated too many false positives,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU.  GPS data “is probably good enough to tell you that you were near a mosque or an abortion clinic … but not good enough to figure out who you were close enough to potentially be exposed to COVID,” Stanley said. Other problems: computer algorithms are not always reliable and cell phone location data are scattered among “a whole ecosystem of privacy-invading companies,” Stanley said.   Lee Nak-yon, South Korean former prime minister and a ruling Democratic Party candidate for the parliament, wears a mask to prevent contracting the coronavirus disease as he poses for a selfie in Seoul, April 10, 2020.In South Korea, officials took a different approach to deploying big data.  They used an infected person’s cell phone location data to retrace his or her steps and then published their “anonymized” or anonymous location histories through phone apps and websites. Residents who learned through the apps they may have been exposed to the virus were quickly tested.    But while effective in containing the outbreak, South Korean authorities “are not doing a good job anonymizing the data,” the ACLU said.     “One alert informed the public, for example, of a ’43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district’ who was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class,” the report said.   In the U.S., authorities have shunned such intrusive techniques. Instead, they have largely relied on aggregate cell phone location data to monitor trends and people’s movements in and out of hot spots.   Experts say such aggregate location data usually don’t present privacy concerns as they involve information about large groups of people rather than individual location histories.    Yet contact tracing by both individuals and health authorities is likely to grow in use once the COVID-19 infection curve is flattened and the virus becomes more geographically localized.   Contact tracing apps use a combination of self-reported health status and location history and allow users to avoid exposure to the virus. FILE – A Google logo is seen at the company’s offices in Granary Square, London, Nov. 1, 2018.Apple and Google on Friday announced plans to develop a joint contact tracing app using Bluetooth technology.  The app allows users to report their positive diagnosis and to receive alerts when they’re in close contact with an infected person.  Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, warned that digital contact tracing of the kind used in Singapore, South Korea and Israel has significant potential for “unintended consequences, misuse, and encroachment on privacy and civil liberties.”  To the extent that contact tracing efforts have been effective in these countries, “they have not been voluntary, self-reported, or involved self-help,” Calo said in written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee. “Rather, public officials have forced compliance and dispatched investigators to interview and, if necessary, forcibly quarantine exposed individuals. I see it as an open question whether Americans would be comfortable with this level of state expenditure and intervention.”  
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The internet is playing a special role in the coronavirus pandemic, allowing billions of people sheltered at home to communicate. A global event is underway online to seek creative ways to deal with the crisis. Mike O’Sullivan has more on the Hack the Crisis movement and its worldwide Global Hack this weekend.
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With billions locked down at home by COVID-19, the internet is a lifeline, allowing people to work, study and share ideas online.It also presents opportunities, say the organizers of the Global Hack, a virtual gathering of hundreds of thousands of people in 50 nations taking place Thursday through Saturday, April 9-11. Prizes for the best ideas for new platforms, applications and innovations will be awarded April 12.Hackathons are usually mass gatherings of software developers and graphic designers who tackle problems in a competitive setting. With the Global Hack now under way, creative teams are working remotely to come up with solutions to problems raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.“We gather people together, with very different skills, different competencies,” said Kai Isand, a leader of the technology collective Accelerate Estonia and head organizer for this weekend’s Global Hack.“We brainstorm ideas, and we actually build them into working prototypes,” she said. A hackathon March 13-15 created a map of COVID-19 cases in Estonia, the country in northern Europe where the online movement Hack the Crisis started. Other teams developed a health questionnaire and a site to link volunteers with medical backgrounds. FILE – An Estonian police officer checks documents at the border crossing point as Estonia reintroduces border control and a ban to enter Estonia for foreigners as a preventive measure against the coronavirus in Valga, Estonia, March 17, 2020.Dozens of nations are now involved.“People said we were in lockdown, and we knocked down the lockdown and we felt so connected with everyone,” said Payal Manan Rajpal, who heads Hack the Crisis, India. She said her country has a huge pool of technology talent, and among the innovations that emerged from a recent Indian hackathon was “an AI (artificial intelligence) enabled robot, which will be very helpful to disinfect via UV (ultraviolet) rays in quarantine wards.” The movement has drawn support from the business community and IT sector.Estonia, where the Hack the Crisis movement started, is a nation of 1.3 million people that embraced the digital revolution early, said Viljar Lubi, Estonian vice minister for economic development for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.“We thought we could use IT in order to make our government leaner and smoother and bring it closer to its citizens,” he said.Estonia has pursued the concept of digital government, and in last year’s parliamentary election, 44% of Estonian voters cast their votes online. The Hack the Crisis movement began with a call for creative ideas from an Estonian government official. In response, international startup consultant Calum Cameron made a few phone calls and the concept was hammered out, with organizers quickly securing government backing.Within days, the March 13 online hack was under way.The online movement quickly spread to Latvia, Germany, Belarus and dozens of other countries. “Everybody in the region was thinking about it. Everybody had the same idea, but Estonia was the only country that was ready to actually go,” Cameron said.The online hacks are not just for IT experts, said Isand, of the Global Hack, and they welcome educators, designers, marketers and anyone with ideas. Online mentors include Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Cameron said that for the first time in history, humanity has been able to come together virtually to address a common problem, “and do something about it … using digital, using internet,” to mitigate this and future crises. 
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Apple and Google on Friday launched a major joint effort to leverage smartphone technology to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.New software the companies plan to add to phones would make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to track down people who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers. The idea is to help national governments roll out apps for so-called “contact tracing” that will run on iPhones and Android phones alike.The technology works by harnessing short-range Bluetooth signals. Using the Apple-Google technology, contact-tracing apps would gather a record of other phones with which they came into close proximity. Such data can be used to alert others who might have been infected by known carriers of the novel coronavirus, although only in cases where the phones’ owners have installed the apps and agreed to share data with public health authorities.Software developers have already created such apps in countries including Singapore and China to try to contain the pandemic. In Europe, the Czech Republic says it will release such an app after Easter. Britain, Germany and Italy are also developing their own tracing tools.Privacy and civil liberties activists have warned that such apps need to be designed so governments cannot abuse them to track their citizens. Apple and Google said in a joint announcement that user privacy and security were baked into the design of their plan.’Privacy consequences’ Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said she’d be looking closely at the companies’ privacy assurances and for evidence that any health data they collect would be deleted once the emergency was over.”People are dying. We have to save lives. Everyone understands that,” she said. “But at some point, we’re going to have to understand the privacy consequences of this.”Security experts also noted that technology alone cannot effectively track down and identify people who may have been infected by COVID-19 carriers. Such efforts will require other tools and teams of public health care workers to track people in the physical world, they said. In South Korea and China, such efforts have included the use of credit card and public transit records.Given the great need for effective contact tracing — a tool epidemiologists have long employed to contain infectious disease outbreaks — the companies will roll out their changes in two phases. In the first, they will release software in May that lets public health authorities release apps for both Android and iOS phones. In coming months, they will also build this functionality directly into the underlying operating systems.On Friday, the companies released preliminary technical specifications for the effort, which they called “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing.”
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As countries scramble to control the coronavirus pandemic with stay-at-home orders, millions of people around the world have turned to the internet to work, study and stay informed. Monday, global internet volume was up more than 40% since the beginning of the year, according to FILE – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during his news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019.In his role with the U.N., Kaye has been mandated to gather information related to alleged violations of freedom of expression.  Kaye investigated whether a video file allegedly sent to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from a phone belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman installed a program that was used to spy on the billionaire.  Bezos owns The Washington Post, and some experts have said they believe the hacking of his phone was an effort to influence the paper’s coverage of Saudi Arabia.  The surveillance played out over months and involved the surreptitious transfer of data from Bezos’s phone, the Associated Press reported.  Kaye called on the U.S. and other authorities to investigate allegations that the Crown Prince was involved, Reuters reported in January.  Saudi authorities have rejected the allegations. “Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out,” the Saudi Embassy in Washington said in a January tweet. Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.— Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) January 22, 2020Karen Attiah, the global opinions editor at the Post, who recruited Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, said she weighs the risks of messaging platforms when using them in her work.  “I don’t have sensitive conversations, work or otherwise, on WhatsApp,” she told VOA. Attiah said she is cautious when sharing “personal or political information with sources who are at risk from their governments.”  ‘Trusting somebody who you shouldn’t be trusting’  Ostrowski’s company works with organizations to alert them of potential loopholes in their software. Tools like WhatsApp, for example, can allow users to share video files. But files can include malignant code that secretly monitors and transmits data.  Most tools offer end-to-end encryption, a kind of technology that ensures communications remain private, making it difficult for third parties, including governments, to eavesdrop on conversations.  But many emerging security problems center around the application itself, not encryption, Ostrowski told VOA.  That means hackers don’t have to break encryption to launch an attack. They merely have to trick the person with whom they’re communicating.  “Because [hackers are] crafting it before it’s sent to the other side, the other side is merely responding to something that’s been crafted, after it’s gone through the encryption,” Ostrowski said.  “You may be trusting somebody who you shouldn’t be trusting,” he added.  Staying safe online takes vigilance, Ostrowski said, especially at moments like the current crisis, when even more aspects of our lives have moved online.  Fortunately, staying alert might go a long way toward keeping us safe.  “A lot of it is common sense,” Ostrowski said. “Who’s going to look after our privacy is you and I.”This story originated in the Africa Division with reporting contributions from VOA English-to-Africa’s Jackson Mvunganyi in Washington.  
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U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  Zoom has seen a surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic as office workers across the country have turned to the free app to quickly arrange video calls with dozens of participants. The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”  The security concern is much greater than “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan attends the opening bell at Nasdaq as his company holds its IPO, April 18, 2019, in New York.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an April 1 blog post that the company was freezing work on new features to focus on fixing its privacy and security problems.   In the meantime, VOA reporting shows that Zoom remains one of the most popular videoconferencing applications for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom are aware of its potential risks.  “I’m not aware of any issues with Zoom,” a senior official in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a small group of reporters a day after the FBI guidance was issued. The U.S. defense official said he was using Zoom to videoconference amid the need to social distance, but when pressed by VOA about the potential security risks, the official added that every discussion his team had while on Zoom was “at the unclassified level.” Government employees can use Zoom for Government, a paid tier service that is hosted in a separate cloud authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It is unclear, however, how many government employees have differentiated between the two services thus far. To date, Zoom remains on the approved list of mobile phone applications for U.S. Department of Defense employees, according to multiple officials. However, one senior defense official said the Pentagon was currently looking into “guidance adjustments” for the application. Multiple employees at the State Department have also been using Zoom for official business. One staff member said he and his colleagues have daily Zoom meetings and have not received any guidance against using the app for internal and external communication. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper last week tweeted about his department’s use of a “Zoom Room.” Be it via “Zoom Room,” WebXing, or VTC, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, March 5, 2020.Concerns of Chinese cybertheft  Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor’s Threat Lens and a former diplomatic security service special agent, told VOA a “good portion” of Zoom’s development team is in China, and the videoconferencing company’s failure to use end-to-end encryption could allow an employee under pressure by the Chinese government to access and share private conversations.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly said maintaining a military advantage over China is the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” and for years top military officers have warned of China’s use of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and cyber-espionage to expand their military capabilities. Steinberg told VOA he would not recommend Zoom use on military or government computers. “Other apps are more time tested,” he said. Nike Ching, Katherine Gypson, Michelle Quinn and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.  
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U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  Zoom has seen a surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic as office workers across the country have turned to the free app to quickly arrange video calls with dozens of participants. The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”  The security concern is much greater than “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan attends the opening bell at Nasdaq as his company holds its IPO, April 18, 2019, in New York.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an April 1 blog post that the company was freezing work on new features to focus on fixing its privacy and security problems.   In the meantime, VOA reporting shows that Zoom remains one of the most popular videoconferencing applications for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom are aware of its potential risks.  “I’m not aware of any issues with Zoom,” a senior official in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a small group of reporters a day after the FBI guidance was issued. The U.S. defense official said he was using Zoom to videoconference amid the need to social distance, but when pressed by VOA about the potential security risks, the official added that every discussion his team had while on Zoom was “at the unclassified level.” Government employees can use Zoom for Government, a paid tier service that is hosted in a separate cloud authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It is unclear, however, how many government employees have differentiated between the two services thus far. To date, Zoom remains on the approved list of mobile phone applications for U.S. Department of Defense employees, according to multiple officials. However, one senior defense official said the Pentagon was currently looking into “guidance adjustments” for the application. Multiple employees at the State Department have also been using Zoom for official business. One staff member said he and his colleagues have daily Zoom meetings and have not received any guidance against using the app for internal and external communication. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper last week tweeted about his department’s use of a “Zoom Room.” Be it via “Zoom Room,” WebXing, or VTC, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, March 5, 2020.Concerns of Chinese cybertheft  Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor’s Threat Lens and a former diplomatic security service special agent, told VOA a “good portion” of Zoom’s development team is in China, and the videoconferencing company’s failure to use end-to-end encryption could allow an employee under pressure by the Chinese government to access and share private conversations.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly said maintaining a military advantage over China is the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” and for years top military officers have warned of China’s use of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and cyber-espionage to expand their military capabilities. Steinberg told VOA he would not recommend Zoom use on military or government computers. “Other apps are more time tested,” he said. Nike Ching, Katherine Gypson, Michelle Quinn and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.  
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Just as the coronavirus outbreak has boxed in society, it’s also squeezed high-flying tech companies reliant on people’s freedom to move around and get together.Since the beginning of March, for instance, Uber shares have lost a quarter of their value. Rival Lyft is down 28 percent. Over the same period, the S&P 500 has fallen just 10 percent, even with wild swings along the way. The picture is even less clear for other, still-private “unicorn” companies once valued at more than $1 billion, such as Airbnb and WeWork.“What market pressure will mean for all companies is survival of the fittest,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of the marketing firm Metaforce and a business professor at New York University. “If you are going into this storm in a bad shape, it’s not going to be pretty.”Just few weeks ago, Airbnb was poised to cash in on a soaring stock market with its highly anticipated public offering. But with the market now reeling and few people looking to anywhere but home, Airbnb is reportedly racking up millions of dollars in losses while fending off a backlash from hosts who rely on its service to survive.FILE – An Uber sticker is seen on a car in Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S.on Feb. 16, 2020.Hosts were furious when the company told guests they could cancel their stays without penalties. Last week, Airbnb agreed to pay hosts $250 million to make up for some of the money lost to cancellations.AirDNA, a data firm that helps property owners set rental rates, says the impact on U.S. Airbnb hosts has been mixed. In New York City, bookings dropped 66 percent in March, but in outer suburbs they were up as people fled the city. Bookings in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., jumped sixfold. Similarly, bookings in the city of Chicago fell 11 percent last month, but in St. Joseph, Michigan — a lakeside community within driving distance — they were up by a factor of four.Cary Gillenwater, who has an attached guest suite in Amsterdam listed on Airbnb, said 20 guests have canceled reservations between March and June, costing him nearly $11,000. He had hoped for compensation from the company but was told that only reservations canceled through Airbnb that specifically mentioned the coronavirus would qualify. Several of his would-be guests contacted him directly to cancel; he refunded their money but may be out of luck when it comes to reimbursement. Airbnb didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The company got a lifeline of sorts on Monday, when two private equity firms — Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners — invested $1 billion in debt and equity in the company. The firms said they expect Airbnb to emerge from the crisis in a stronger position.The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, however, that the company will pay interest of more than 10 percent on those loans and that it has made a “verbal commitment” to reduce fixed costs and to bring in supplemental management — terms that often mean layoffs and other cost-cutting. Airbnb didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Journal report.FILE – Supporters of Airbnb stand during a rally at City Hall in New York in 2015.Uber, meanwhile, is trying to reassure jittery investors than its aggressive expansion plans for ride-hailing remain on track. Like its rival Lyft, it has seen ride demand hit a wall as states ratchet up stay-at-home orders. Both companies are trying to conserve cash so they can weather the pandemic’s fallout, in part by emphasizing deliveries of food and other goods.Even in its worst-case scenario — an 80 percent decline in ridership through 2020 — the company said it would end the year with $4 billion in cash. That would still mean burning through almost $7 billion this year, which could create problems for Uber’s larger ambitions such as self-driving cars and air taxis.Analysts, however, remain largely bullish. “We believe both Uber and Lyft will come out the other side still well placed to capture growth and opportunity,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.Drivers are another story. San Diegan Christopher Chandler, who’s been driving for both companies for two years, said he’s lost more than 80 percent of his income since riders all but vanished. “I’m going to have to make some hard choices about what bills I won’t pay this month,” said Chandler, who has switched to deliveries that don’t come close to covering his former ride income.Other lesser-known companies, however, have benefited from the pandemic. Zoom, the video conferencing provider, has seen its stock soar to new highs in recent weeks; shares have nearly quadrupled compared to their IPO price just 11 months ago.FILE – Blue Apron CEO Matthew B. Salzberg, center, poses with employees in front of the New York Stock Exchange before the company’s IPO in New York, U.S., in 2017.Not so long ago, the meal-kit maker Blue Apron was threatened with delisting from the New York Stock Exchange after its shares fell below the exchange minimum of $1. Since the beginning of March, however, company shares have more than tripled after it reported a sharp increase in consumer demand fueled by stay-at-home orders.CB Insights lists more than 450 startups worldwide valued at $1 billion or more. While it can be hard to paint these unicorns with a broad brush because of their variety of business models and leadership styles, co-founder and CEO Anand Sanwal said that what COVID-19 is doing to the economy will be “tough for any company to weather, startup or not.”Sanwal said he’s already seeing a decline in early-stage seed investments that help launch new tech startups. But he said investors who have poured big sums into unicorn startups will likely try to do what they can to help keep them healthy, at the very least by grooming them for sale rather than standing by as they collapse.“Investors are going to make some hard decisions about whether this is a temporary downturn, or a company that doesn’t have a shot,” he said. 
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In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, one sign that social distancing measures may be working is that people’s temperatures — a symptom of the virus — are dropping in some cities in the U.S., according to a smart thermometer company. The data could give health officials an early look into how the virus is progressing. Michelle Quinn takes a look.
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