Memphis should cancel events to short-circuit virus
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As the country and world grapple with the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it's time for Memphis and other local municipalities to come to terms with the new reality.
The new reality is that public gatherings, from classes to festivals, should be canceled to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. And yes, that includes the Memphis in May International Festival.
And yes, the new reality will set back the local economy by millions of dollars.
But Wednesday marked a turning point in the national thinking. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The NBA suspended its season . The NCAA and the Memphis Tigers' American Athletic Conference announced the teams would play tournaments in emptied arenas. President Donald Trump announced he would suspend travel from Europe.
The Memphis Grizzlies player Ja Morant summed up the day in a three-word tweet: “wow bro wow.”
The news gets worse: Beloved actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson tested positive for the coronavirus while in Australian for pre-production on a (Memphisconnection alert) new biopic about Memphian Elvis Presley. Hanks was playing Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, but — in a double blow for Memphis — production is now halted.
The new reality is already setting in locally. Yesterday, as Tennessee's tally of coronavirus cases grew to nine, and Arkansas and Mississippi reported their first cases, Rhodes College and the University of Tennessee system (which includes the UT Health Science Center in Memphis) announced they would move classes online.
And this morning, Shelby County Schools announced it would cancel school the rest of the week, giving its students an extended spring break. Nashville schools did the same. And the University of Memphis made a similar decision.
Shelby County has two confirmed cases of the coronavirus. But the truth is, the county doesn't know whether there are more cases because of a shortage of tests.
Meanwhile, the Shelby County Health Department seems determined to deny this new reality, forcefully sticking its head in the sand in a dangerous and misguided effort to prevent a panic. Despite not knowing how many coronavirus cases there are locally, the the Health Department insists there's no local spread and has taken the official stance that there's no need to take "drastic" countermeasures like canceling events or classes.
"Well, things aren't that bad yet" was an argument against social distancing that may have made sense a couple of days ago. But the argument unraveled yesterday.
Here's what Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the top infectious disease expert in the country, is recommending: "We would recommend that there not be large crowds," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. National Institutes of Health testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, when asked specifically about sporting events like the NCAA tournament and the NBA.
"If that means not having any people in the audience ... so be it. But as a public health official, anything that has large crowds is something that would give a risk to spread."
Fauchi's point — the same point being made by infectious disease experts around the country, and the same point the health department is ignoring — is that you should cancel gatherings as a way of stopping spread before it happens. The health department's wait-and-see approach isn't just naive — it's dangerous.
What infectious disease experts are worried about isn't the personal risk of infection (you probably have as much chance of contracting coronavirus as Peter Weber and Madison Prewitt do of living happily ever after post"the Bachelor). The real risk is that local health care providers and systems could be overrun if there's a surge in patients.
Look at what happened to Italy, Iran and China. In a recent column for The Boston Globe, Marc Lipsitch, head of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, points out that Iran and Italy are now "tightly restricting social conflict" now, "but these interventions are coming late, and hospitals are teetering under the stress." In Italy, a shortage of medical supplies and hospital beds are forcing doctors to prioritize saving younger patients, as reported by Politico. China saw similar shortages in Wuhan.
Not to be alarmist, but the same could happen in Memphis if the city waits too long.
Of course, there will be huge economic consequences to canceling events like Memphis in May, which had an estimated economic impact of $149.1 million in 2019. It's understandable, from an economic perspective, we you'd want to wait until the last possible minute to begin canceling such events. But think of it this way: any economic losses from acting proactively would be dwarfed by the losses from acting reactively.
What's known generally as "social distancing" is a proven way to slow the spread of disease. That's why San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people. That's why Rhodes College and the UT system are moving classes online, and why public schools locally and in Nashville are letting out classes. That's why fans won't be at upcoming college basketball tournaments or the playoffs.
And that's why Memphis should start social distancing immediately, before the coronavirus spreads across the city and before it overwhelms the local health system.
The new reality is that Memphis can't afford to wait. Columnist Ryan Poe writes The 901, a running commentary on all things Memphis. Reach him at poe@commercialappeal.com and on Twitter @ryanpoe.