From church services to college campuses to collegiate and professional sporting events, social get-togethers around the U.S. are being limited or canceled because of the growing coronavirus crisis. The construction industry is no exception to the pattern. Organizers of JLC Live, the popular construction conference and trade show, announced that the Providence, Rhode Island, event will be rescheduled from March to August 26-29. And internationally, Eisenwarenmesse- the International Hardware Show—which was planned for March 2020 in Cologne, Germany—has been postponed for a year, to February 2021.
The moves come amid growing recognition that suppressing the deadly virus altogether is no longer possible. Instead, medical experts are focused on “flattening the curve”—limiting the speed of spread of the contagion enough to give hospitals and doctors a fighting chance at handling the numbers of patients certain to flood the medical system. Experts advocate “social distancing”—avoiding large groups, keeping your distance during face-to-face meetings, and avoiding hand contact, along with basic hygiene strategies such as thorough hand-washing.
Organizers of smaller get-togethers are following suit, from what is now being called an abundance of caution, but what in retrospect may appear as simple common sense. For example, the upcoming April 9 meeting of the American Lumber Standards Committee’s Board of Review planned in Washington, DC, will now be held by conference call, the ALSC has announced. And in Maine, designer and builder Michael Maines has canceled a monthly “BS + Beer” building-science meetup, saying in an email, “Perhaps out of an abundance of caution, but perhaps not, we won’t be getting together for BS + Beer until the situation is clear.” Maines referenced an article in the Medium (see: “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now” by Tomas Pueyo) as one basis for his decision-making.
One thing is already clear: it only takes one infected person at one conference to unleash an outsized effect on a community. Case in point: the Biogen conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 26. The Boston Globe has this story (see: “How the Biogen leadership conference in Boston spread the coronavirus,” by Mark Arsenault). “The Boston conference gathered roughly 175 company executives for two days of meetings at the Marriott Long Wharf hotel,” reports the Globe. “Seventy-seven of the 95 confirmed cases in Massachusetts have been linked to the meeting… An additional 12 people who have tested positive for the virus outside Massachusetts have been linked to the Feb. 26-27 meeting, including five in North Carolina, two in Indiana, and one each in New Jersey, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., officials said. Two have tested positive in Europe, Biogen spokesman David Caouette said Wednesday.”
In Massachusetts, governor Charlie Baker has declared a state of emergency. So has Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island (the location of JLC LIve conference).
