Cancelling Junos would have made Chief Brody proud

Nobody wants to be Larry Vaughn.

If that name doesn’t immediately register, he’s the fictional mayor of Amity in the film Jaws, and the novel upon which the 1976 blockbuster was based.

Vaughn resists the attempts of Amity police Chief Martin Brody to close the beaches in the middle of summer, despite growing evidence that a shark is responsible for swimmer deaths.

Vaughn wants to protect the economic interests of his tourism-fuelled community and has become a caricature of those who ignore evidence in pursuit of financial gain.

Few of us, though, would feel comfortable in the role of Chief Brody, either, trying to convince skeptical town leaders that a threat exists, despite a dearth of convincing proof.

It’s easy to envision these stereotypes when considering the decisions last week, first to allow the Juno Awards to proceed in Saskatoon and then to pull the plug amid growing concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The number of events in North America that were cancelled or altered substantially last week in response to the coronavirus pandemic was staggering.

A week ago, a news conference was held by the City of Saskatoon and the Saskatchewan Health Authority to explain that the Junos would go ahead as planned since the risk was deemed low in Saskatchewan.

The Thursday announcement that the Junos were cancelled, just as events were going to kick into high gear, came the same day a presumptive case of COVID-19 was revealed in Saskatoon.

The statement issued on the cancellation was made by city hall, Tourism Saskatoon, the provincial government, the Ministry of Health, the health authority and the Junos.

But there were lots of reasons to think cancelling, or at least scaling back, the event was probably the prudent path prior to the day the decision was made.

While there were no cases in Saskatchewan a week ago, virtually all of the cases in Canada were linked to travel.

Saskatoon’s John G. Diefenbaker International Airport recorded 1.5 million passengers in 2018, so to think that somehow the borders on a map effectively prevent the spread of a contagious disease seems naive.

The Junos, of course, involve folks travelling from all over Canada to join in the festivities. Many of those people in the music industry tour various venues all over North America and the world.

There were 800 hotel rooms reserved for people in the music industry, who likely were coming to Saskatoon from provinces like British Columbia and Ontario, where there were already dozens of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Once in Saskatoon, the event includes multiple concerts at various spots, all indoors.

The province updated its protocols on mass gatherings on Wednesday to advise anyone who felt “ill” to avoid events with lots of people — like the Junos, which essentially combines travel with mass gatherings.

The difficulty is gauging the threat from the virus. The reality is that we know little about it.

It’s highly contagiousness and some have compared its mortality rate to the Spanish flu of 1918. Such comparisons seem spurious, given that a century later, the Spanish flu death toll still remains unclear, with estimates ranging from 17 million up to 100 million.

We do know that the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic on Wednesday.

We also know that last week, the cancellation of events mounted, including major league sports, tournaments, music festivals and campaign rallies. Italy closed down.

Yet in Saskatoon, “the show must go on” seemed to be the prevailing thinking. Then that thinking became outdated as the world changed in a matter of hours.

Public officials walk a tightrope of either breeding panic or seeming complacent.

You’ve got your choice: Chief Brody or Mayor Vaughn.

The Junos were expected to bring about $9 million worth of economic activity into Saskatoon. That’s substantial.

But putting a price on public safety always proves precarious.