pipemakersforum.com

Folks, I have come to the conclusion that the next few months will not be a good time to travel or to gather in large groups.
I am therefore going to forego any trips to pipe shows this year.
I will be skipping New York, Chicago, Columbus and probably Richmond.
I hate missing these shows, but with this Covid-19 loose, I think that it is prudent on my part to just avoid the risk. I don’t want to carry anything home to my family.
My son, who is a research physician with a large organization, has also cancelled his travel plans for the next few months.
I realize that many of you rely on pipe sales for a portion of your income, and under those circumstances, I would feel pressured to attend, but I am not in that position.
I am also concerned that the Chicago Pipe Show will be adversely affected financially if more folks cancel their plans, and I plan to make a monetary contribution to them to offset their financial woes.
I also won’t make any recommendations to anyone else, and hope things are uneventful for those who attend.
With luck,this is a tempest in a teapot.
Good Luck,
DocAitch

I am a physician too.

I have some travel plans in the next 8 weeks but none involve large groups of people in one place (like a conference room). I will be staying in some hotels. At this point I have no intention of changing plans. For the types of things I'll be doing I'll be no more likely to catch it in New Orleans or visiting friends in the Delta than I would be to catch it at the grocery store or at church here where I live. Can't say what I'd do about a conference or something like that where a lot of people from a lot of places are concentrated in one or two large rooms.

At this point I don't blame anyone (from the WHO, to the Feds, down to the individual) for taking this seriously and doing what is prudent given the info we have. But the epidemiology remains fairly sketchy. Data from China is unreliable at best. Data from everywhere else is limited by relatively low numbers. Under reporting in China cuts both ways. There may be more people with the virus than they are reporting but if there are more people with it than is being reported and the number of deaths is relatively accurate that means the case mortality is lower than currently reported. Who knows at this point.

Well. If all this blows over as I expect it to, perhaps you can join us out west on Halloween. West coast pipe show in Vegas