There is resiliency in travel. Typically, a trough during a crisis is followed by a strong rebound. Hotel room demand surged in 2004 after SARS, international travel to the U.S. increased 12%, domestic demand increased 4%…
— from the Colorado Tourism Office website, April 2020.
It appears, on the surface, that the current crisis in the oil industry is closely related to the drop in travel — business and tourism travel — all around the globe. People driving their cars less. Fewer plane flights. Oil tankers sitting in harbors, waiting. Fewer semis on the highway. The only increase in the transportation sector might be Fed-Ex and UPS delivery trucks, rushing to deliver necessary goods from Amazon. We don’t know what the oil industry will look like, three years from now. Permanently changed? Back to normal?
As the the US economy opens back up, some economic sectors will revive more slowly.
Will Americans become accustomed to a slower pace of life? Will our habits be changed by this sudden blow to our economic solar plexus?
The tourism crisis in Colorado resort communities will, I suspect, see a slower-than-normal recovery. Some worry it may not recover fully… ever. As a friend suggested yesterday, we might be headed for a “new abnormal.”
It appears that New York, California and other hard-hit states have begun to see their new-infection numbers leveling off. The Trump administration has released ‘guidance’ to advise states and localities about easing restrictions.
But the national toll of virus fatalities continues to climb… testing kits remain scarce… and health policy advisors warn that the light at the end of the tunnel is still miles away. A Harvard study released this week suggests that without an effective treatment or vaccine, social distancing measures may have to remain in place into 2022.
Here in Colorado — until very recently, known as a prime tourist destination — the Polis administration has been judging the COVID situation with the help of data provided and analyzed by a collaborative group of scientists from the Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado School of Medicine, University of Colorado-Boulder Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado-Denver, and Colorado State University. That group provided its latest analysis on Monday; you can download it here.
The report includes a number of charts and graphs, and one of the more interesting graphs, I think, is this one:
Here’s the description of the graph:
Figure 4. Projected ICU need for phased reduction in social distancing by the general public in combination with adoption of all three complementary interventions: high levels of social distancing by high-risk groups, mask wearing in public and improved case detection and isolation. Projections assume social distancing is relaxed to 60% or 65% at the end of the stay at home order and then stepped down to 45% on June 1 or June 15.
‘ICU’ is of course ‘Intensive Care Units’ — the specialized hospital rooms used to treat the most severe cases of COVID-19. The four graphed lines show predictions, should Colorado relax its social distancing requirements for low-risk groups, while also improving its testing and isolation capabilities. The chart suggests that a severe relaxation of social distancing during the first part of June will result in a huge spike in serious infections peaking in September or October.
As I mentioned, this group is providing key guidance for the Polis administration, and we can assume the governor and his advisors would be horrified to see 3,300 ICUs occupied by the end of September (the worst case scenario in the above graph) considering that only 1,850 ICUs currently exist in state of Colorado.
That is to say, we have half the ICUs needed to handle the Colorado School of Public Health ‘worst case’ prediction.
What happens after October, the graph doesn’t predict. But we shared, above, one of the ‘talking points’ from the Colorado Tourism Office website:
There is resiliency in travel. Typically, a trough during a crisis is followed by a strong rebound. Hotel room demand surged in 2004 after SARS, international travel to the U.S. increased 12%, domestic demand increased 4%.
A curious comment, to be sure. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) appeared in 2002 and quickly spread around the globe. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 8,098 people were infected in 26 countries, and 774 died from the infection. (Other sources report slightly different numbers.) The World Health Organization declared SARS contained in July 2003, but additional SARS cases were reported until May 2004. Nearly all of the SARS deaths happened in Asia or South Africa. The US suffered zero fatalities.
Since Chinese officials first reported a novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan last December, the virus has spread to 206 countries. As of yesterday, John Hopkins University was reporting 2.6 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 177,000 fatalities. About one-third of all confirmed cases — 823,000 — are here in the US, the nation with by far the most confirmed cases, with four times the number confirmed in the next highest country, Spain.
For the Colorado Tourism Office to compare the current COVID-19 outbreak to the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic seems a rather interesting choice. A naïve choice, perhaps?
Meanwhile, travel industry leaders have been gathering in Denver to promote tourism as the silver bullet that will help Colorado salvage its economy. From the tourism-oriented Colorado.com website:
Though marketing budgets across Colorado have been ravaged, the [Economic Council Tourism Subcommittee] shared a deep conviction that the single most powerful path to recovery would be full-out promotion of Colorado travel. This group is intent on sending a clear message to the Governor: The path to jump-starting the state’s economy — and rescuing what’s left of 2020 — lies in enticing people and groups to burst out of their confinement and start spending money at restaurants, hotels and attractions as fast as possible.
“We are in a perishable industry. Our success depends on people walking through the door,” said [Richard Scharf, CEO of the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau]. “The minute we see a glimmer of light, I’d rather try to salvage this year, rather than throw it away.”
Well, that’s may be an accurate assessment of the situation. But what if we — the citizens and taxpayers and workers — put our time and effort into a sustainable economy, rather than ‘perishable industries’?
Would that make any sense at all?