The Tucson Festival of Books, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday, March 14 and Sunday, March 15, has been cancelled due to a large number of authors pulling out and unable to travel due to fears of coronavirus.
The Festival of Books announced the cancellation on Monday, March 9, stating: “It is with great sadness that the Board of Directors of the Tucson Festival of Books has chosen to cancel the 2020 Tucson Festival of Books. We know the Festival of Books brings much joy to many in our community as well as visitors from around the country. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation this year where we are unable to provide a quality festival for several reasons: Amid concerns over the CoronaVirus (COVID-19) we have experienced more than 100 author cancellations; authors have expressed deep regret that they will not be able to spend the weekend with us. This has deeply affected our author panel schedule and we anticipate more changes and cancellations will be forthcoming. This leaves us with little or no way to plan for author panels or to communicate effectively with the public about those changes.”
Thus far, the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association does not plan to cancel Tucson’s next major event, the Fourth Ave. Street Fair, scheduled for March 20, 21 and 22.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2020.
I wondered about this as I was scheduled to sign books and tell stories. They made the correct decision. It is a hard thing for Tucson but in light of what is going on, it had to be done. People come from all over and it would be so hard to control any spread. I hope I will see everyone next year.
Watch for a rescheduled reading event by Marianne Dissard and Chris Rush… The show must go on, right? Call it the ‘off’ event from the Festival. Unrelated, unofficial but very real… facebook.com/mariannedissard for updates.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Is it really “fear” as the title says, or is it, well-reasoned, measured “precaution?” I feel like our collective language around what is going on is important right now.
They are peddling fear. is it political or monetary gains? I don’t know. One thing for sure is that 3500 people died last month in auto accidents and we did nothing. Most don’t even know it. So yes it is typical of the “sky is falling crowd.”-
https://www.health.com/condition/infectiou…
Didn’t have to happen. We know how to keep our society functioning.
China stopped the virus cold.
In a country in with 1.4 billion people exposed to the virus, they posted less than 82,000 infections for four days in a row.
Taiwan has been below 50 infections for five days in a row.
Both China and Taiwan masked up their entire populations.
Our CDC, the Center for “Disease Control” is fighting hard against masks based on a flawed theoretical concept as to the protectiveness of the mask.
Their theoretical objections:
1. The mask becomes saturated with breath moisture and the virus migrates through
2. The virus separates from its sneeze or cough droplet and sails through a mask filtering 0.3 microns
3. We don’t have the ability to watch a 3 minute youtube to seal the mask to our face
4. We can’t follow instructions to purchase a four dollar N95 filtering mask and will mistakenly purchase a $2 breathe around mask.
China and Taiwan tell us that while masks may not stop 100% of all theoretical infections, they do stop 100% of all actual infections when combined with hand washing and precautions not to touch one’s face.
We are losing time. CDC is intentionally limiting production in the U.S and has no plans to encourage us to wear masks.
CDC (15,000 employees, average compensation $123,000 per year, $8 billion per year, couldn’t produce a $20 million test) is intentionally creating a culture hostile to allowing us to wear masks.
The CDC represents a grave mortal threat to our physical and economic health by telling people not to save millions of lives by wearing an N95 mask.
A well-fitted N95 mask filters out 0.3 microns, proven 100% protection against Covid-19 when also washing hands and not touching your face.
We have thousands of companies capable of producing thousands of masks per day if given approved designs and a contract. We could all chose to mask up in less than two months.