CERAweek, an oil and gas industry conference held in Houston, has been cancelled due to coronavirus fears. There has been only one confirmed case of COVID-19 in Texas. Somebody is getting nervous if they’re cancelling an oil company conference.
Unfortunately, that one case is in San Antonio, at Lackland Air Force base, where my son works.
The virus has been spreading in the US for six weeks. There are probably thousands of people infected in this country, undetected. Due to snafus in testing infrastructure, you have had to be very sick before the CDC will test you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-may-have-spread-undetected-for-weeks-in-washington-state/2020/03/01/0f292336-5bcc-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html
I don’t know if it is still true, but it used to be where everybody who joined the Air Force went for basic training.
On the bright side, PZ, if your son is in the military, then he’s probably in good physical condition. (And also is under the age of 60.) So even if it turns out that the military base is a teeming mass of coronavirus infestation, he’s likely to come out of it okay even if he gets sick.
Allen Institute also canceled a conference planned for this week. And the lines at Costco were extra long this weekend.
I’m not worried about my son — he is in good shape, and he’s unlikely to have been directly exposed to the viral carrier. I still wouldn’t want any of my loved ones to get a nasty sweaty achey horrible disease.
@#5, PZ Myers:
That goes without saying. The point is that at least the possibly-exposed family member is the one theoretically best prepared to survive it. I’m more or less in the opposite situation: among my relations, with one exception, ill health and old age correlates to geographical and sociological likelihood of exposure to coronavirus. (Thankfully, the one exception is the oldest relative with — as far as I know, knock on wood — the worst health, who is relatively out of the way for epidemics in general and this one in specifc.)
The number of people infected in the host city is irrelevant; the number of infected attendees is the issue.
If it’s greater than zero, everyone at the conference is a contact that needs to be isolated and tracked.
Ain’t no executive got time for that shit.