Last evening the first community based US coronavirus case was announced. There is never just one. And so, just like flu hits different areas of the country at different times, there will be pockets and hot spots, and then they’ll clear and there will be others.

In China, the first cases arose in November of 2019. (Yes, that’s correct, not December.) It was noticed by medical personnel in December, who were silenced by the regime (and several later died), and not “believed” by the Xi regime until late January, when they began locking down China. It is now two months later, and China is still in partial lock-down. It will take another few months, at least, to get back to full speed.

The difference between China (and Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan) is that we know it’s coming, and we are learning every day from what those countries do what works and what doesn’t. And we know the best possible thing to do is to test people, and the worst possible thing to do is to place large numbers of people in an enclosed space. Like, um, a political convention with people coming from all over the country, and journalists coming from other countries.

We don’t have a good model of where, domestically, pockets will arise, nor how long they will last. And with Mike Pence in charge of the task force, you can bet your bottom dollar that mistakes will be made unless he is completely ignored. Remember that he’s the sole source of 250 cases of HIV because he ignored the Indiana Department of Health, delayed clean needle exchanges because he hates gay people and in his mind AIDS is a “gay disease”.  I am not making this up. But I digress.

What if there was a need to cancel the 2020 Democratic National Convention? Iowa and Nevada have shown that the DNC, as an organization, doesn’t have a great record leveraging technology – so “vote from home on the first ballot” probably won’t be an option that leads to a reasonable outcome. Don’t believe me? Iowa’s caucus results have still not been certified because we just don’t know the numbers and can’t seem to do the math.

I don’t know the answer. The Convention is in July, and a decision won’t need to be made until May or June. Similar to the Olympics, which has said that if they’re going to cancel, that decision will be made in May. It’s two weeks after the DNC, but it’s a completely different situation. The likelihood is that the Olympics will need to be canceled for a number of reasons. First, there are qualifying meets and matches this spring that may not come off, thus excluding athletes from certain countries. In addition, large infrastructure for athlete housing, sports venues and media organizations still needs to be built. Then, “Olympics” involves an order of magnitude more people than a political convention and those people come from all over the world. But most importantly, Japan has shown a complete inability to deal with major disasters, like the Fukushima Daiichi Accident, the 2011 tsunami, and most recently, the Diamond Princess. Their ability to create a safe space and marshal forces is lacking. My guess is that we could do better BUT it will depend on where the hot spots are.

I don’t really have an answer, but I hope that the Democratic National Committee is thinking about this, and not acting like a giant ostrich.

Go wash your hands….