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Good morning. This is a very personal moment for so many people that I felt compelled to share my own perspective on the coming crisis. As a daily newsletter and blog, we are always pressing to be relevant and deliver value to our subscribers. The current alarm in our society regarding the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) are both justified and likely worse than our collective expectations can fathom.
That isn’t to be fatalist or nihilistic, but instead to deal in hard truths.
The extent to which this pandemic will disrupt your daily life is incalculable, primarily because our entire planet hasn’t seen an equivalent challenge since the early part of the 20th Century with the Spanish flu outbreak. Estimates of mortality during that deadly flu outbreak ranged from as little as 17 million to as many as 100 million. At the time, the world population was approximately 1.85 billion. Consequently, at the high end it took the lives of 5% of humanity.
While current mortality estimates skew much lower, at around 3.4%, things are very different in the modern age. First, ease of travel has increased exponentially in the intervening 100 years, with air travel and other forms of transportation. This is how coronavirus made its spread across the globe in such fast fashion. Add to that, the myriad ways we can gather today socially, and you have a recipe for disaster in our industry.
As you already know, almost all sporting events have been cancelled. While I write this NASCAR (here’s a list of what other sports continue in operation) is still running, but in empty stadiums. There is no estimate to when this will break, because no other affected nation has been able to control it. However, there have been signs in South Korea and China that they are slowly getting a handle on new cases.
This means that we can achieve the same results here in the United States, and eventually this crisis will end. But what will the consequences have been? What will COVID-19 cost us as an industry and nation? Well, we want an answer to that question, as well.
That is why on Thursday March 19th at 5pm ET/2pm PT, we are going to host a live chat, so operators can ask questions, get advice, and start planning for whatever happens next. We have invited several experts from legal, business, and marketing to join us to discuss the lasting implications of the coronavirus outbreak.
So please join us. We appreciate the damage this will potentially do to your business and we are committed to serving you during this crisis to the best of our capacity.
Now more than ever, we need each other. See you Thursday.
