MIT has temporarily required that all campus events with 150 or more in attendance be cancelled, postponed, or "virtualized".
If I were among the libreplanet organizers, I would be trying to persuade my fellow organizers that they should not proceed as currently planned. Related: Stanford has ordered that in-person classes not be held through the rest of the academic quarter. Columbia has canceled classes for a week and then will resume them in virtual form. San Francisco has ordered that no "inessential" events with more than 50 in attendance be held in any city-owned property and expressed that this is meant to be a model for all private venue operators in the city. This is a very serious step that implies, for example, movie theaters and nightclubs ought to shut down if they want to voluntarily comply. Emergency legislation is being pushed through to, among other things, put a moratorium on evictions for tenants directly and indirectly impacted by the virus. So for example, with hotel attendance far down, many workers will struggle to pay rent and bills and thus risk eviction. Epidemiologists are projecting that on our current trajectory, the capacity of acute care medical facilities will be overwhelmed within the next few months. In San Francisco, for example, one major hospital has been rehearsing how to put up acute care medical quonset-style tents in its parking lots. The way we can lesson the society wide impacts of the epidemic include a period of social distancing in addition to all the handwashing and so on. -t
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