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Thread: Contingency Planning - Return to the days of old?

  1. #71
    Airmutt's Avatar
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    Missing an AirVenture won’t kill anybody. Going and contracting COVID could for some.

    The next month is going to be interesting to see how the local, state and federal governments attempt to start the recovery. There has been signs of infighting already: local v state, state v fed.

    The big deal is whether AirVenture even happens. If it’s a go, it will also be interesting to see what public health mandates are imposed and how EAA will handle. I’m of the opinion that social distancing is going to be with us for quite a while, at least thru the summer. That is going to seriously impact how AV has been conducted. No more herd mentality. Think about it, a line of 500 people at admissions on opening morning is two thirds a mile long. Hmm, that would put me just about next to the SOS BROTHERS tent. Do they serve breakfast??
    Dave Shaw
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  2. #72

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    Quote Originally Posted by CHICAGORANDY View Post
    True - but for those who've attended for a long time and for those for whom this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, for the over 7,000 volunteers like me who make the event happen, for the 800+ exhibitors who ARE a big chunk of what AirVenture is all about, and for all those across the planet now questioning whether or not to spend the HUGE amount -many times not refundable - that an airplane ticket and other transportation to Oshkosh, WI, USA costs, not to mention all the paid laborers, countless service and food companies and workers and the 'kinda' important' $$ infusion into the whole area for the event? It IS a big deal whether or not the event happens.

    Worth noting last year's numbers -

    https://www.eaa.org/airventure/eaa-a...-a-Record-Year

    Other than that, the possibility of catching a presently incurable virus, and if you're older - like a large % of EAA member and AirVenture attendees are -the slight possibility said virus WILL kill you? Life is good, says I.


    Sorry Randy. I guess I should've left out the first line.

  3. #73

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    No worries mate - we are all simply responding to the possibility of NO AirVenture 2020 with our heads and our hearts at the same time. Hopefully we'll know for sure in a few weeks or so?
    "Don't believe everything you see or read on the internet" - Abraham Lincoln

  4. #74
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    Time for my rant, which you will all take as you wish.

    everything in life is risk management. Can I get killed trying to get to OSH? A dual engine failure crossing Lake Michigan or running into an embedded TRW that popped up since the last ADS-B weather refresh? Am I going to catch dysentery and die a truly horrible death, or wish I had, from eating at the food court? Is the guy below me in the airshow stack going pull up right in front of me?

    These are all risks. We recognize the hazards, assess the likelihood of the hazard being realized, the probable effects, and make decisions on managing that risk. What we cannot do, individually or as an organization, is let fears control us. Much of what I see and read is based on fear, not reason. Two months ago we had no idea where we would be today and none of us know where we will be two months from now. Or even one month from now.

    Your chances of dying from the flu are still greater than dying from the current politically correctly named virus. That does not downplay that risk, but it is just one more risk to assess and manage. Along with the risk of driving or flying to OSH, there is the risk of a tornado killing you in your tent in the middle of the night or becoming violently ill from something else you are exposed while there.

    I am not saying to go ahead or cancel. If EAA as an organization decides to go ahead, it is still an individual decision whether to go or stay home...as it is every year. I am simply saying that these decisions need to be based on rational risk management, not fear of the unknown.

    Final thought. To borrow related concept. An airplane in the hangar is safe, but that is not what airplanes are for.
    Last edited by Mayhemxpc; 04-14-2020 at 05:21 PM.
    Chris Mayer
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  5. #75
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    Certainly, everything in life is risk management. I fly a homebuilt aircraft with an unfortunate record of in-flight wing failures.

    But then...it's a single-seat airplane. I risk no one but myself. Tragedy for my wife, of course, tragedy for my remaining family and for the few friends I have left. But it stops there.

    That's the problem with COVID-19: It doesn't stop there. Once you're infected and contagious, you can be spreading the disease for up to two weeks before you actually show symptoms. Sure, I might take the risk for myself...but am I going to take the risk for my wife, the (other) old geezers in my EAA chapter, my 95-year-old father, the checker at the grocery store, the server at my favorite restaurant?

    This is a highly contagious disease. Few people now alive have experienced its like. What was once science fiction is now the daily news.

    Maybe attending a packed forum at Oshkosh is worth the risk to you....but do have the right to take that kind of risk with other people's lives? And if they cancel the forums...or limit attendance to maintain social distancing...how many people are going to scream that they've been cheated?

    As for "No worse" than the flu, well. In the first four months of the flu season in Washington state, there were 91 deaths. There have been more than five times as many due to COVID-19 in just the last two months. And about three times that of the entire 2018-2019 flu season. In just two months. And the deaths continue.

    Also, I don't recall past flu seasons where New York City had to bring in refrigerated trailers to temporarily store the dead, or where hospitals in other areas are stacking bodies in unused rooms.

    If you think this is "just like the flu", talk to the nurses and doctors who deal with it. Even the President now says this is not like the flu.

    And, again, we can look at the US mortality curve for COVID-19:


    (from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/)

    It actually is starting to taper off a little bit (look at the logarithmic plot) but we're still looking at tens of thousands of additional dead.

    Now, there's good news out there. Places that took early action by closing schools and businesses and limiting contact are seeing some tapering off. Washington State has managed to control the contagion well enough to not completely overwhelm health-care facilities. San Francisco also reacted early, and is keeping things under control. New York City thinks they've peaked.

    But...as ever, we don't know what things are going to look like in three months. Cramming 150,000 or so people onto an airport in Wisconsin will surely be pushing things.

    And as for the "Politically correct" name...blame, in part, the pork industry. It took a huge hit when one strain of human influenza was named "Swine Flu," even though no one could actually catch it from ham, bacon, or any of the other luscious products. It was part of the reason a more scientific nomenclature was developed.

    Ron Wanttaja

  6. #76
    Where does it stop? Do we panic and close everything next year when the new and improved virus comes around? At some point we need to get on with our lives and accept inherit risks. As for the refrigerated semis...they do that at many hospitals across the country during flu season. The only difference is the news never reported on that because the flu is so common place. I saw more than one semi for this purpose in my EMS days.


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  7. #77

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mayhemxpc View Post
    Time for my rant, which you will all take as you wish.

    everything in life is risk management. Can I get killed trying to get to OSH? A dual engine failure crossing Lake Michigan or running into an embedded TRW that popped up since the last ADS-B weather refresh? Am I going to catch dysentery and die a truly horrible death, or wish I had, from eating at the food court? Is the guy below me in the airshow stack going pull up right in front of me?

    These are all risks. We recognize the hazards, assess the likelihood of the hazard being realized, the probable effects, and make decisions on managing that risk. What we cannot do, individually or as an organization, is let fears control us. Much of what I see and read is based on fear, not reason. Two months ago we had no idea where we would be today and none of us know where we will be two months from now. Or even one month from now.

    Your chances of dying from the flu are still greater than dying from the current politically correctly named virus. That does not downplay that risk, but it is just one more risk to assess and manage. Along with the risk of driving or flying to OSH, there is the risk of a tornado killing you in your tent in the middle of the night or becoming violently ill from something else you are exposed while there.

    I am not saying to go ahead or cancel. If EAA as an organization decides to go ahead, it is still an individual decision whether to go or stay home...as it is every year. I am simply saying that these decisions need to be based on rational risk management, not fear of the unknown.

    Final thought. To borrow related concept. An airplane in the hangar is safe, but that is not what airplanes are for.

    I couldn't have said it better myself. GOOD ON YOU!!

    Ron, the numbers are being skewed. I'm reading, seeing, and hearing that if someone dies, no matter what they died from, if they had covid symptoms, they're reporting that they died from covid.
    There again, I say if you're "afraid" to go to OSH for any reason at all.......DON'T GO.
    Last edited by mbalexander; 04-15-2020 at 05:28 AM.

  8. #78
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mbalexander View Post
    Ron, the numbers are being skewed. I'm reading, seeing, and hearing that if someone dies, no matter what they died from, if they had covid symptoms, they're reporting that they died from covid.
    So all the medical professionals in New York City are lying. Death rates haven't increased; they're just hanging around the hospitals pulling in overtime pay and laughing at peoples' naivete. None of them have the integrity to go to the press and blow the whistle on this huge scam. All those refrigerated vans are just for show, Dr. Fauci is lying, the whole CDC is in on it. They've hid the truth from the President....or he's participating.

    There's a thing called "Occam's Razor:" Where multiple explanations for a situation are possible, the preferred solution is the simplest. If you find a dent on your car door in the parking lot at the store, it could have been caused by one of King Kong's toenail clippings...or someone bashed it with their own car doors when opening.

    Sure, there could be some sort of "Deep State" conspiracy to manufacture death reports for whatever reason conspirators deem necessary. Or, in fact, it could be good ol' Mom Nature taking another whack at improving the herd...like she does every five-ten years or so. She seems to come up with a doozy ever hundred years.

    Snopes reposted a good article showing how people's reaction to COVID-19 is similar to how folks reacted to the plague in the 14th Century....

    https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/...-have-changed/

    No doubt there were those screaming about the "altum statum" back then, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by mbalexander View Post
    There again, I say if you're "afraid" to go to OSH for any reason at all.......DON'T GO.
    I realize it's un-American to say this, but I'm reluctant to cause other people's deaths. If you think that makes me a coward, so be it.

    This is the quandary EAA is in right now. Economically, they need to hold AirVenture. But they have two issues hanging over the heads.

    The first is the moral issue: Should they hold the event with the very real possibility that it may foster the spread of COVID-19, leading to the deaths of attendees and their families? It doesn't matter if the individual attendees accept the risk. EAA has to accept the moral responsibility if this ENTERTAINMENT activity leads to the death.

    EAA accepts this, to some extent, already. Last year, there were 30 fatal aircraft accidents across the US, around the Oshkosh time period. Certainly some of those were on their way to or from Airventure.

    But aircraft crashes aren't contagious. COVID-19 is, virulently so. And huge public events like Airventure are ideal for the virus. Read an article recently that compared New York's COVID rates vs. California's. New York's is much higher, because people are packed close and use mass transportation more. Remind you of Airventure?


    So EAA has to balance its economic need with the understanding that it may lead to a much higher risk of sickness or death among its membership.

    The ironic thing is that the result of such contagion won't be immediately apparent. If, say, 1,000 attendees are infected, they won't start showing symptoms until they get home. On the last day of Airventure, people will cheer how their gambles paid off.

    But, a week or so after returning home, they'll start getting sick. While they or their families may make the connection, there's no tracking among the attendee list as a whole. Our only clue will be an uptick in the "in memorial" entries in Sport Aviation.

    Of course, though, someone will sue EAA, and it may all come out then.

    I mentioned two issues hanging over EAA's heads, regarding whether to hold Airventure. The second is whether they'll be allowed to.

    Washington State, New York, and California, the hardest-hit states, are reaching their peaks. But they're highly populated, allowing the disease to spread more rapidly. It spreads slower in less-populated states. But it IS spreading.

    When will Wisconsin peak? We don't know, and neither does EAA. Wisconsin currently bans assemblies of 50 or more persons. With three months to go, I suspect this will be lifted. But what other limitations will remain? And if COVID-19 flares up again (as is predicted, once many states drop their limitations), how does EAA know they won't get hit with huge limits right before the event?

    All speculative, of course. Several times in this thread, we've decried the crystal ball shortage.

    But, from the purely economic standpoint, EAA has got to dig one up from somewhere. Cancel early, and they cut their losses. If they're forced to cancel late, it'll cost them much more. The uncertainties across the country are going to cost them many of the volunteers that the event relies on; a late cancellation may lead to lawsuits from vendors. Many potential vendors are hurting right now, and may be cancelling in any case. Even with ideal health conditions, it's likely that attendance will be way down...hurting, again, the vendors that depend on Airventure for a portion of their business.

    Don't envy EAA, that decision....

    Ron Wanttaja

  9. #79

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    Quote Originally Posted by rwanttaja View Post

    When will Wisconsin peak? We don't know, and neither does EAA. Wisconsin currently bans assemblies of 50 or more persons. With three months to go, I suspect this will be lifted. But what other limitations will remain? And if COVID-19 flares up again (as is predicted, once many states drop their limitations), how does EAA know they won't get hit with huge limits right before the event?

    Ron Wanttaja
    I'm not even sure Wisconsin's peak is relevant. People come to Airventure from 50 states and dozens of countries. Basically the crowd is a global mix, geographically weighted to favor the Midwest, then the East Coast, West Coast, and Canada, followed by representatives from the 4 corners of the flat earth.

    I just can't see EAA going forward with it unless there is an identification/treatment miracle in the short term medical pipeline.

  10. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kyle Boatright View Post
    I'm not even sure Wisconsin's peak is relevant. People come to Airventure from 50 states and dozens of countries. Basically the crowd is a global mix, geographically weighted to favor the Midwest, then the East Coast, West Coast, and Canada, followed by representatives from the 4 corners of the flat earth.
    I look at Wisconsin's peak as being relevant from the political angle. If cases are still rising in July, the governor would be less likely to relax restrictions. If the peak was in, say, June, and was high, people would be skittish about it and be less likely to allow a major event.

    In any case, international travel, right now, is basically banned. Even crossing from Canada requires justification. It's likely this will be relaxed by summer, but I suspect the market for recreational travel is going to be low for a while.

    Ron Wanttaja

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