A guy I work with took his family there last week and said it was a ghost town.
Well, it was right before spring break.
The last night, Sunday the 15th, the damn place was packed and they stayed open until 2am for a cheerleader event.
Next day freaking Clearwater beach was packed and people are STILL going to travel to St Paddy's day places like Chicago and Boston even though those events are cancelled.
As is typical of my overdoing my research, let's just say that this is really bad. I'll tell anyone if they want to know, but yeah. I'm motivated in part to know more because I'm in the very highest risk category for this in that I've had multiple bouts of near fatal pneumonia, I have asthma, I have a compromised immune system AND I live in Florida where people keep dinosaurs for pets. I mean "Florida man" didn't just get that name for no reason beyond geography...
China nipped it in the bud, some say. How? Well, they issued a BRUTAL crackdown including quarantining 60M people and dragged people who showed symptoms to who knows where. People taken haven't returned.
Italy has a home quarantine and if you're out with symptoms, you can be jailed for 12 years. You can only go out to the supermarket or the doctor.
Spain is just starting to see cases explode, shut down the country and are instituting drastic measures. Most of the EU is closing their borders.
I would only ask a few things:
If this was all hysteria, would Wall Street be willing to see TRILLIONS of dollars vanish over hype? Would Disney suspend worldwide operations in their resort division which accounts for 37% of their revenue during a holiday season (spring/easter break)? Would every sports league AROUND THE WORLD halt operations if this was "just a cold"?
Also, remember, the ONLY places they've adequately contained the virus have all instituted SEVERE measures restricting movement and in Italy's case, the Drs in ERs are having to do battlefield triage and determining who gets ventilators and thus, who lives and dies because they didn't act quickly enough.
Seeing as we aren't restricting travel, many people are still going to work and people are STILL gathering in large places in close proximity... yeah.
I've been doing some basic math based on exposure modeling, actual infection rates including community spread, who are the carriers vs who suffer the most from infection and mortality rates based on a number of factors.
This is an appropriate reaction:
Remember, this is from the pattern guy who is willing to give bad news. I don't want to be right, but the math is the math.
Anyway, whether it's Captain Tripps or Wuhan-400 or just COVID-19, it's super serious. Please everyone take every precaution.
Also... I knew it would happen, but I miss Brockers already. Good guy. He should do very well in Baltimore.