| Hey y'all, it's Austin. Have you heard the upbeat news about JD.com Inc.? The coronavirus outbreak, which has caused more than 3,000 deaths and is ushering in panic around the globe, has been pretty good for the Chinese retailer's drone and autonomous delivery businesses. "The outbreak of Covid-19 is indeed a great catalyst to put these technologies under the spotlight," the company wrote in a blog post. It also said that this isn't the first time JD came out on top during a public-health crisis: "The outbreak of SARS 17 years ago worked as a catalyst to drive the explosive growth of China's e-commerce industry, among which JD emerged a winner." The wording may sound out of touch, if not tastelessly self-serving, but JD's blog post highlights the awkward situation many companies find themselves in as coronavirus fears sweep the globe. Advanced machines and digital tools really are playing an important role in addressing the outbreak—from artificial intelligence-enhanced disease detection to disinfecting robots to apps for food shipments. But can tech companies highlight those contributions without seeming as if they're profiteering from an unfolding tragedy? To be sure, JD's technology does appear to be helping the situation in Asia. In its blog post, the company wrote of its robots shepherding necessities to a hospital in Wuhan and its drones spraying disinfectant in an affected community in Inner Mongolia. I don't doubt their good intentions. After Bloomberg News reached out for comment, the company revised the language in its blog post. "JD.com has deep first-hand experience with how devastating epidemics are," a spokesman said in a statement. "We are doing everything we can to aid the fight against Covid-19." Yet when more than 88,000 people are infected with the virus, any related marketing can feel indelicate. Just look at the AI-powerhouse competitors that are showing off their facial-recognition algorithms' abilities to identify even people wearing surgical face masks, or the robotics makers peacocking about their "world-leading" and "superior" technology's prowess at combating the disease. Other startups envision market opportunities in everything from air purifiers to safe chauffeur services, while analysts are bullish on "stay-at-home" stocks, meaning services that are likely to gain in popularity as everyone hunkers down in their living rooms. Research firm MKM Partners points to Netflix Inc., Sonos Inc. and Grubhub Inc. as possible opportunities in the case of a pandemic. It can be hard to draw the line between corporations advertising altruism and corporations acting altruistically. Tech companies understandably want to inform the public about the positive work they're doing to counter the spread of Covid-19, especially if their technology can genuinely help doctors, victims, governments and businesses navigate the crisis. Such efforts are likely to be better received, though, if these companies previously have endeavored to resolve these types of issues, rather than rushing in now that the disease is making headlines. Facebook Inc. provided a good example of how to handle this dynamic. In October 2014, the social network introduced a feature called Safety Check, which enabled users to quickly inform friends and family about their well-being in the event of a natural disaster. If, say, a large-scale earthquake struck your area, Facebook could automatically detect your location and prompt you with an iPhone notification asking if you're safe. The service could then automatically disseminate your answer to your contacts, so you no longer had to deal with dozens of text messages from concerned loved ones. It was a smart, simple tool that actually solved a problem—and was released not during a global crisis, but after one. Facebook's engineers said they got the idea during Japan's 2011 tsunami, and developed it in the following years, instead of rushing something out in the tsunami's aftermath, which likely would've only created confusion. Other tech companies, such as Airbnb Inc. and TaskRabbit, have released disaster-relief programs in calmer times too. Of course, not every startup and corporation has the resources to plan that far ahead, and if their technology truly can aid with the coronavirus problem now, they should jump into the fray rather than sitting on the sidelines. But companies would also be wise to avoid flagrant one-upmanship and commercial aggrandizement. Coronavirus-related marketing likely won't have the intended effect. —Austin Carr | 
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