Coronavirus’s rise in Georgia doesn’t necessarily halt massive public events

A parade drawing more than a half-million spectators who then enter taverns to drink and carouse. Election-season speeches, protests and town halls mingling impassioned crowds with government officials and social leaders. Some of the biggest sports gatherings on the calendar.

Even as Georgia’s coronavirus case count mounts, these events and more are scheduled here in the coming month. Local and state officials are trying to figure out what to do.

“This is the proverbial rock and a hard place,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an interview.

Savannah holds what it calls the nation’s second-largest St. Patrick’s Day parade, and as of Tuesday, the March 17 event was still on, Johnson said. In contrast, Boston has canceled its parade. So has Ireland — all of them.

The NCAA men’s Final Four basketball tournament, scheduled for early April at MercedesBenz Stadium, will still go on

with attendees, at least as of Tuesday. A DeKalb County town hall scheduled for tonight to discuss the coronavirus, on the other hand, has become a virtual meeting. The CNN Center has suspended studio tours, and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce has postponed two upcoming conferences.

As of Tuesday evening, six Georgians in or near metro Atlanta had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new virus, while others were awaiting diagnoses.

“It’s a difficult decision. It’s a very difficult decision,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, director of global public health at Emory University.

Factors

Del Rio has advised some organizers on holding events. He said he has not advised Savannah. But he doesn’t fault organizers for going on with the parade.

For one thing, he said, it’s an open-air event. For another, Savannah has no cases yet; the nearest diagnoses were still 200 miles away as of Tuesday.

“If you want to be absolutely airtight don’t have the event,” he said. “I think while I have the best interest of public health at hand, you also have to think of economic consequences, and you have to not discard those.”

Instead, Del Rio advises, people should be careful if they have risk factors for COVID-19, such as underlying health conditions, or are older than 60.

His guidance for parade attendees who pour into bars and restaurants in close quarters: Be careful. Don’t go if you have risk factors. If you do go, follow good hygiene.

Other epidemiologists have come down hard calling for caution. “Early intervention spares the health system from intense stress,” Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a Twitter post.

“Early intervention means before it feels bad. Guangzho” — an area in China which he views as a success story so far — “intervened when they had 7 confirmed cases (and zero) deaths. Wuhan’s came when they had 495 confirmed cases, 23 dead,” Lipsitch said. “We need measures that while painful for all will slow social contact — canceling public gatherings, paid sick leave, working from home, and the like.”

Massachusetts, where Lipsitch works and the St. Patrick’s Day parade has been canceled, has more coronavirus cases than Georgia. But experts warn that there’s not enough data, and testing is behind, so the numbers now are the tip of an iceberg.

‘Taking our chances’

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams last week told reporters at an Atlanta press conference that “Schools, businesses, churches, should all be thinking about and doing tabletop exercises to say, ‘What will be our triggers when we close a school? Or when we pull down an event?’”

Many of those decisionmakers won’t have public health expertise, but even with expertise, such decisions aren’t always easy. Regular folks who attend? They are leaving the big decisions up to the event organizers.

NASCAR fan Brad Craven, 58, lives 15 minutes from Atlanta Motor Speedway, which hosts the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 on Saturday. Craven has family coming from north Georgia, but they don’t plan on taking any extraordinary precautions. “We probably should,” Craven said. “But we’re taking our chances.”

The point of canceling events now isn’t necessarily to stop it spreading forever; it’s to slow the outbreak, experts say.

“If you look at hospital capacity right now, much of it is full, up to 95, 96, 97 percent,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said during a congressional hearing on Tuesday. “We really don’t have a lot of resilience in the capacity of our health system.”

Mixed messages have come out of Washington, but a noncontroversial message is that everyone should practice good hygiene, washing with soap, not shaking hands or touching. That, and taking special care for vulnerable populations.

Health experts agree that the elderly and people with diabetes, cancer or other underlying conditions should not attend events.

“We are trying to get the elderly and vulnerable to kind of just step back and try to avoid being in crowded places, avoid travel,” Redfield said. “This virus clearly can live in the environmental surfaces for some period of time. Finding the virus doesn’t mean it’s infectious, but we can detect this virus for a prolonged period of time on surfaces.”

Del Rio is frustrated that mixed messages come out on that, too. Can you get the virus from touching a surface? Can you get it from a carrier who looks healthy? Data is changing those answers, as well as the case numbers.

Both Lipsitch and Del Rio stressed not to be fooled by low case numbers being reported now. They are “like the light coming out of a star — it is showing us the past,” Del Rio said.

“I think we’re all struggling,” Del Rio said. “I think we’re trying to make decisions the right way.”

Concerns about the coronavirus have resulted in the cancellation of many events. The AJC will monitor these announcements and keep you informed about any postponements, rescheduling and cancellations, but it’s best to check with venues or event organizers before making plans to attend.