Summer FUN in Orlando

I’m still a fan of yours, Mike, being able to respectfully disagree use to be a benchmark quality of this Nation. I’m just going to continue to stick with tradition!

 

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Right. This summers FUN show would be CRAZY to go to, but January is ok. What, is the virus going to the Alps for the Winter?

 

I have an exhibit, but it might end up on hold.

 

Two hypotheses:

- assume that once you contract it, you're somewhat immune to it (for a time). If many people have recovered, there is a herd immunity built into the population that reduces the chance of spread. Since this is a new virus, there is currently no herd immunity. It takes time. Perhaps by January, there will be enough herd immunity to reduce the severity of spread/outbreaks. There's a lot of ifs here, of course, but it's been observed in other viruses.

- assume that within 6-9 months there will be a vaccine. Based on the billions in research and fast-track lanes these developmental vaccines are receiving, that's not completely impossible. The vaccine might not be widespread by January, but I'd expect that vaccines would be approved and started implementing before Christmas.

If you accept either of these hypotheses as remotely plausible, then a January FUN show might be possible. I'm going to choose to believe it will happen.

 

Since I am one of those "old koots" who is of the age that the virus likes to kill, I'll have to see how things play out.

 

I usually have my trip booked about now for the January show. I'll probably wait till July and see how things look. The airlines will give me credit towards a future flight. Not sure about the hotel. They may charge me for one night. I would be good with that. Still lots of time to figure it all out.

I feel sad for all the dealers out there. Shows are important and drive the business. They have much more to deal with and worry over. About all I have to do is show up and have fun.

 

Book the hotel. Even in non pandemic times, if the hotel charged you for a night when you didn't stay, all you needed to do was dispute the charge with your CC company and they'd reverse the charge. In these times I'd imagine it would be even less of a hassle.

 

There is one thing good about all of this. Folks have learned a lot about how to be safe. Stuff we have never thought much about in the past. More will practice safety in the future.

 

Everything you said here is 100% correct...but its not complete. The issue with COVID-19 right now is that its a new virus that we have no population immunity for. That's not the case for the seasonal flu. Yes, every so often a flu recombines and we see novel flu...it last happened in 2009...but that's not an every year.

We need some immunity throughout the population to lessen the impact of this virus. That will slow the spread. But, its a chicken and egg problem. The measures that are being put in place are an attempt (and who knows how successful they really are) to simply reduce the rate of the spread in the hopes of not overwhelming the healthcare system while at the same time build some of that herd immunity. I believe that had we not globally put the measures into place...we would see this herd immunity and equilibrium come a lot faster, but the death toll would be far higher. What's the value of those lives...I guess that's the unanswerable question.

I'm assuming that this summer is shot...and I'm hoping that fall is totally trashed but I assume it will be. But, I would think by January we should have enough population immunity where some kind of equilibrium would be reached.

 

It is, problem is you should be concerned about what the show would be like. If everyone else is concerned and saying no you very well could be walking into a basically empty room or bare bones cases aka a waste of time

 

There's actually a third one which is probably the most realistic which is there's just very effective treatment for it by then. If you have treatment it really doesn't matter if someone gets it. Once that happens things will get back to normal very quickly

 

For all that COVID-19 is horrid and deadly, it's not (yet) on the same scale as the past flu pandemics.


The 1968 flu pandemic killed 100,000 in the US / 1,000,000 world wide (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html) out of a world population a little over 3.5 billion.

Against today's 7.8 billion population that's roughly 200,000 / 2,000,000 million. When the flu returned in 1969, it was a much weaker strain. We haven't seen any such indications for SARS-CoV-2.

In 1918, with a world population around 1.7B with 675,000 deaths in the US and 50,000,000 worldwide (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html) in three waves (Spring 1918, Fall 1918 and Late Winter 1919 (although don't forget that between the "end" of the 2nd wave in November 1918 and the start of the 3rd wave in February 1919, plenty of people died (including my great grandfather in December).

Against today's 7.8B that's equivalent to 2.7M US and 200M world-wide. Again, when the flu returned in the fall of 1919 it was weaker.

 

Was the flu actually weaker? Or did the 'herd' develop resistance that lessened the severity?

 

While most people are scared out of their minds right now, it's not to not ask the bigger question of where do we finally say the preventive measures are doing much more harm than good? We can be smart about things and not destroy the world at the same time and it's almost impossible right now to not say we haven't done more harm than good with the millions and millions of people who are ignoring everything else and not getting proper health care all because of this.

Certain things like shields probably should have always been in place at registers given the flu and things like that are a huge issue every year, but besides the metal health aspects there are a lot more things that kill people every year being significantly ignored right now