Coronavirus

[planet planet]

Bummed as apparently my Australia work trip is off in April now. Somehow Australia was lumped into APAC for our company's travel advisory notice.

[Radbird]

[Jocephus]

[sighyoung]

Great! Rob Schneider's next movie doesn't have to go straight to Netflix!

[wart57]

[tlombard]

Tony, what are the 6 countries?

China, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore are the six countries currently.

Sorry, was out for a few days!

[CardsofSTL]

Pretty big deal; losing a lot of revenue for the city this weekend. Unless people come anyway and just get really trashed at the bars; which I highly recommend.

Arnold Sports Festival cancels expo, limits spectator access

Part of the Arnold Sports Festival has been canceled amid concerns about the coronavirus, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Tuesday.

DeWine said the athletic competition will move forward, but spectators will only be allowed in for the Arnold Classic finals on Saturday night. The event’s weekend-long trade show is fully canceled.

The event was expected to draw 200,000 attendees to downtown Columbus and typically has an economic impact of around $53 million, according to Experience Columbus, making it one of the city’s largest annual tourism events.

The festival has typically taken over the Greater Columbus Convention Center, the Ohio Expo Center and other venues each year since 1989. It has grown from a one-day bodybuilding event to a four-day festival.

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called into the press conference and described the decision “a very sad moment for us.”

“Things like this happen and we have to adjust quickly to those sorts of circumstances,” Schwarzenegger said via phone. “We want to make sure Columbus understands, and (the) citizens understand, they are, for us, the most important thing.”

Schwarzenegger vowed to postpone the event and “have it later on this year.”

“We have the biggest and best health and fitness festival in the world but we would never choose making money over people’s health,” he said.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said rescheduling the event was a possibility but that the city would “continue to follow the spread of the coronavirus and make that decision with the best information we have at the time.”

[Radbird]

The virus has been spread thru the use of paper money....if you have any paper money , place it in a plastic bag and place it outside the front door... please provide your address and I will come by tonight and take the bags to insure your personal safety.... I’m just trying to do my part to help contain this contagion from spreading.

[IMADreamer]

A doctor friend of mine said he expects my area's first coronavirus patient to be announced this week. Obviously he was tip toeing around some hippa violation but he said it's here and the moron that has it probably infected many people.

So that's good news.

[sighyoung]

I'm glad my music society's concert season has ended early. Normally, we have our last concert in April, but because of an unusual schedule, we wrapped up early on March 1st. As it was, one or two people were too afraid to go out because of the virus.

The Emerson String Quartet performed that Sunday, and I spoke to the group's violist about their travels. He mentioned that they already had to cancel a trip to Taiwan, and didn't know if their scheduled European tour and trip to Korea will go as planned.

Meanwhile, I'm glad I don't have to handle any more cash and checks, or allow people to touch my phone to make credit-card purchases.