COVID-19 Is Changing Everything

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write since Tuesday.  It was originally going to be about the postponement of one of my races from April to September because of the spread of COVID-19 in Europe.  For a few days, I was preoccupied with how to change my travel plans.  By the time I got around to writing this, so many things had changed that it seemed like everything I was originally going to write was already obsolete.  A lot has changed in the last six days.

The COVID-19 pandemic started in mainland China in December.  By the end of January, it was spreading rapidly in China, but there weren’t many cases in other countries.  It seemed to be confined to Asia.

I wasn’t too surprised when I learned that this year’s Hong Kong Marathon was cancelled.  Hong Kong has a land border with China, and a lot of people cross that border every day.  It’s no surprise that the virus spread to Hong Kong.

What sent shock waves through the running community was the cancellation of the Tokyo Marathon in February.  That race was scheduled to take place on March 1.  On February 17, the Tokyo Marathon Foundation announced that the race would be cancelled for most of the 38,000 participants.  Only the elite runners would be allowed to race.

By then, Japan had several hundred cases of COVID-19, but most of them were people on a cruise ship that was quarantined after visiting China.  Within the general population, most known cases could be traced directly to people who had visited China.'

Then Japan had its first cases of “community spread” of COVID-19.  These were people who hadn’t visited China and didn’t have any known contact with other people who were infected.  Nobody knew how they came into contact with the disease.

Tokyo is hosting the summer Olympics this year, and they didn’t want to take any chances on an epidemic that would put them at risk of having to cancel the Olympics.  Out of an abundance of caution, they made a quick decision to restrict the Tokyo Marathon to just the elite runners.  At the time, the consensus within the running community was that they overreacted.  That was two months ago.  I doubt if anyone would still say that today.

Races sometimes get cancelled, but this was no ordinary race.  The Tokyo Marathon is one of the World Marathon Majors.  That’s a series of large marathons that also includes the Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City marathons.  The series was originally established as the big money circuit for elite athletes.  Since then, it’s been promoted as a bucket list goal for amateur athletes like me.  Thousands of runners have a goal of running all six of these races within their lifetime.  Because of that, it’s getting increasingly difficult to get into these races, in spite of their size.

I’ve already completed the World Marathon Majors, but I still belong to a Facebook group where runners who are interested in the series share information.  I wasn’t registered for the Tokyo Marathon this year, but some of my friends were.  Through this Facebook group, I was connected to hundreds of other runners who were affected by the cancellation of this year’s race.

The next two World Marathon Majors on the calendar were Boston and London.  Immediately, everyone wondered if those races were in danger of being cancelled.  This was in February.  At the time, most people I know thought those concerns were overblown.  The situation in Europe and North America seemed quite a bit different than the situation in Asia.  Outside of Asia, there were still only a handful of known COVID-19 cases.  Most of them could be traced to passengers of cruise ships that had visited China.  I was one of the people who still thought there was no way the Boston Marathon would be cancelled.

While I wasn’t that worried about Boston, I was starting to worry about other races.  Several of my upcoming races were in Europe.  Those seemed endangered when there was an outbreak in northern Italy.  Within a few days of discovering their first COVID-19 case, Italy had more than 100 cases in the northern regions.

By then, I was following a website that tracked the number of cases in each country.  I watched nervously as other countries in Europe started to detect new COVID-19 cases.  Most of them could be traced directly to people who had recently been in Italy, but that didn’t make it any easier to control the spread.

One of the insidious things about this disease is its slow incubation period.  You can be infectious for more than a week and not have any symptoms.  By the time you know you’re sick, you could have spread it to several other people.  Another insidious thing is that it’s life threatening for some people, but other people have only mild symptoms.  I’m sure many people who contracted the disease assumed they just had a cold or the flu.  They probably didn’t seek medical attention, so they never got tested.  They also probably never saw an urgent need to isolate themselves.

My last marathon was the Atlanta Marathon on March 1.  That was my fourth marathon of the year, and it will probably be the last one I run for at least a few months.  After that I was scheduled to run the Asheville, Bratislava, and Boston Marathons.  Of those, the one that worried me was the Bratislava Marathon.

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia.  Slovakia doesn’t border Italy, but it’s only about 120 miles away.  My trip to Bratislava was going to include two nights in Vienna, which is in Austria.  Austria borders Italy, and they were one of the first countries to have cases that could be traced to the outbreak in Italy.

I watched nervously as the number of cases spread.  At first, there were two known cases in Austria. 

Then there were five.  Then there were dozens.  Then 100.  Eventually, Slovakia detected its first infection.

In the meantime, other countries in Europe had more than 1,000 cases, forcing them to start cancelling large events.  In France, they banned any indoor event with at least 5,000 people.  Since most large marathons have expos that are held indoors, the new restriction forced the Paris Half Marathon to be postponed from March to September.  A few days later, the Paris Marathon was postponed from April to October.

Several other large races were cancelled, including all the upcoming races in Italy.  It wasn’t just marathons that were being cancelled.  I tended to hear about those first, because I’m plugged into the running community, but large conventions and trade shows were also getting cancelled.

A week ago, Slovakia had seven known cases of COVID-19.  Neighboring Austria had 144 cases, which made me nervous.  I wasn’t actually nervous about catching the disease.  I was only worried about one of my races getting cancelled.  I was still clinging to false hope that I could still travel to Bratislava in April to run the marathon.  I was in denial.

On Tuesday, I got the official notice that the Bratislava Marathon wouldn’t be held on April 5, as originally scheduled.  It was rescheduled for September 6.  That’s better than a cancellation.  I could still run the race.  I just had to change my travel plans.

My airfare was nonrefundable.  Normally, if you want to make changes to an international itinerary, you have to pay a $250 change fee.  Because of the COVID-19 situation, Delta was waiving the change fees for anyone scheduled to fly in March or April.  That didn’t mean I would get a refund.  I still had a plane ticket that I needed to use.  They were just allowing me to change my itinerary to fly on different days.

I usually fly home the day after a race.  When I’m flying home from Europe, I need to get on an early flight, so I have time to make connections in a European hub.  The closest international airport to Bratislava is the Vienna airport.  To get there from Bratislava, you have to take a bus.  The nearest bus station to the airport is about a mile and a half away.  Getting to the airport in time for a morning flight would be inconvenient to say the least.  By contrast, it’s easy to get to the airport from Vienna.  There’s an express train from the central train station to the airport.  Because of that, my original itinerary had me spending Monday in Vienna and then flying home on Tuesday.

Here’s where things get complicated.  I was already scheduled to run a marathon in Tallinn, Estonia on September 13.  My flights were already booked.  I was scheduled to depart on a Wednesday.  Ideally, I wanted to fly home form Vienna on a Tuesday, but that would mean having a long-haul flight one day, arriving home jet-lagged, and then leaving again on another long-haul flight the next day.  If I were booking this from scratch, I would just stay in Europe and make it one long trip.  That, unfortunately, was no longer an option.  I already had to separate airline itineraries.  I could reschedule them, but I couldn’t combine them.

I held off on rescheduling my flight, so I could weigh my options.  Then, over the next few days, I discovered just how much the world was changing.  President Trump announced a travel ban for most countries in Europe.  The NCAA basketball tournaments were cancelled, giving “March Madness” a new meaning.  NBA, NHL and MLB games were cancelled.  Large events of all kinds were being cancelled.  I didn’t know it yet, but that was just the beginning.

As recently as two weeks ago, the city of Boston said there were no plans to cancel either the St. Patrick’s Day parade or the marathon.  When they cancelled the parade, I realized the marathon might be cancelled too.  On Thursday, every major news outlet in Boston was running stories that the race would be postponed to a weekend in September or October.  There wasn’t an official announcement until Friday morning.  The Boston Athletic Association had to choose a new date, make arrangements for things like convention center space, and get approval from eight different cities and towns.  Deb and I watched the press conference, but by then the information had already been leaked.  The new date was September 14.

As with the Bratislava Marathon, a postponement was better than an outright cancellation.  This race, however, landed on the same weekend as one of my other races.  It was the same weekend as the Tallinn Marathon.  Technically they were on different days, but it was logistically impossible to do both races.  There aren’t any direct flights from Tallinn to Boston.  I couldn’t run Tallinn on Sunday morning and get to Boston in time to race again on Monday.  Even if I could, it wouldn’t be much fun.  I had to choose.

At first the choice seemed difficult.  I’ve never done the Tallinn Marathon, and I’ve been looking forward to visiting Tallinn for a long time.  I already paid for an expensive overseas flight.  This race wasn’t covered by any travel waiver.  I would have to pay the expensive change fee.  Even then, I would need to find a way to use that ticket for another trip by next February.  Otherwise I would lose it.  Boston, however, is my favorite marathon.  It’s the only race I do every year.

Getting into the Boston Marathon gets more difficult every year.  Because the number of applicants always exceeds the number of available slots, just qualifying isn’t enough.  From one year to the next, nobody ever knows just how fast they need to be to actually get into the race.  The exception is runners who have finished the Boston Marathon for at least 10 consecutive years.  They get to register early.  If they qualify, even by one second, they know they’ll get in.  This year will be my ninth consecutive Boston Marathon.  Next year will be my tenth, and I already have a qualifying time.  If I skipped this year’s race, it would break my streak.  I came to realize that if I missed Boston this year, the race would never feel the same.  I’m so emotionally attached to this race that I would feel lost if I missed one.

Deb is much more cost-conscious than I am.  I worried that she would be upset if I cancelled my Tallinn trip and didn’t find another way to use that ticket.  I didn’t know if she would understand how important Boston is to me.  As it turns out, she knows me better than I know myself.  I wrestled with the decision before finally deciding that I had to run Boston.  Deb always knew that was the right decision.

My next scheduled race was the Asheville Marathon on March 22.  That’s a smaller race in North Carolina.  Before the end of the day, I learned that race had been cancelled.  As usual, I have races scheduled every two to three weeks for the foreseeable future.  They were lined up like dominoes.  The first few dominoes have fallen, and there’s no end in sight.

Now I had four airline itineraries that needed to be cancelled or rescheduled.  When I tried to do it online, the Delta website wasn’t working.  It was overloaded.  I tried calling Delta, but the recorded message said the wait time was more than six hours.  Because of the European travel ban, there was a huge backlog of travelers who needed to change their flights.  Delta was asking people who weren’t flying in the next three days to wait.

Saturday morning, I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I figured there wouldn’t be as many people trying to call Delta at 4 AM on a Saturday.  I was right.  I got through quickly, and rescheduled my flights.  I’m not sure how I’ll reuse my ticket for Tallinn.  I’m also not sure how Deb and I will reuse our tickets from the Asheville trip.  Those are problems for another day.

There’s a reason all these large events are being cancelled.  It’s part of a coordinated effort to slow the spread of the virus.  By now, you’ve probably heard terms like “social distancing” and “flattening the curve.”

The Chinese government took extreme measures to contain the outbreak in their country.  They locked down entire provinces, closed schools, shut down factories, and tracked the movements of their citizens to ensure nobody broke quarantine.  So far, it appears to have worked.  At the peak of their outbreak, China had thousands of new cases each day.  Now, they’re experiencing fewer than 10 new cases each day.  Meanwhile, of the 80,000 people who were originally infected, roughly 60,000 have recovered.  More than 3,000 people have died in China, but it could’ve been much worse.  It’s still possible that they could have new outbreaks as restrictions are lifted, but it seems like the worst is over in China.

A few other countries, such as Taiwan and Singapore, diligently tracked everyone who was potentially exposed.  Because they acted quickly, those countries were able to contain their outbreaks.

Western countries haven’t been as successful.  The following graphs show the rate of infection in six different countries.  Each graph begins at the point where a country reached 100 confirmed cases.  In each of these countries, the virus has spread virtually unchecked.  In each case, the graph follows the same trajectory.  New cases are growing exponentially, doubling every five days.

Roughly 20 percent of infected patients need hospitalization, usually requiring ICU care and the use of a respirator to help them breath.  Even with hospital care, 2-3 percent of patients die.  Without this care, more would die.  Italy has become a cautionary tale.  Their hospital system has been overwhelmed.  There aren’t enough hospital beds to accommodate all the patients that need them.  Doctors are forced to do triage, choosing who gets care and who doesn’t.  Patients who are older than 65 are left to die without care, so younger patients can have a chance to survive.

That’s where other countries are headed if they can’t slow the spread of the virus.  The United States has fewer confirmed cases than Italy, but we’re only trailing them by 11 days.  At this point it’s probably too late to contain it.  There are confirmed COVID-19 cases in almost every state.  Because testing has been limited, the known cases are probably just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s already community spread in all parts of the country.

That’s why it’s important to “flatten the curve.”  The best we can hope for at this point is to slow the spread, so hospitals don’t get overwhelmed.  It won’t reduce to number of people who will eventually get infected, but it will hopefully limit the number of people needing hospital care at the same time.  These two graphs illustrate the difference.  The goal is to keep the number of infections from going above the dashed line.

Over the weekend, several large companies have asked their employees to work from home.  Most states have closed their public schools.  Universities are moving conducting classes on-line.  Some are also closing campuses and requiring students to move out of their dormitories.  The CDC has advised cancelling all events larger than 50 people for the next eight weeks.  At least four states have banned dining in restaurants, allowing take-out and delivery only.

Hopefully this will be enough, but only time will tell.  A few countries in Europe are taking measures that are more extreme.  In Spain, you can’t even walk down the street.  Everyone is on home quarantine.

When I first learned that the Bratislava Marathon was postponed, I assumed I would look for a smaller race closer to home.  Since then, my thinking has evolved.  I realize that would be a bad idea.  I’ve accepted that I won’t be running any marathons in the near future.  I’ll keep doing training runs on my own.  I’ll have to get back into the habit of doing long training runs at least every two weeks.

I’m currently signed up for three races in May.  All three are in Europe, which is currently in worse shape than the United States.  I don’t expect to run any of them, but I haven’t rescheduled my travel plans yet.  I’m waiting to see what the race organizers will do.  For each race, there are three possibilities.

First, they could reschedule to a weekend in the fall, like Boston and Bratislava did.  Assuming the new date doesn’t conflict with something I’ve already booked, I’ll reschedule my travel for the new dates.  This is the best case.

The second possibility is that they could simply cancel this year’s race, like the Asheville Marathon did.  Then I’m left with the dilemma of how to use my plane tickets so I don’t lose them.  To get the full value of my tickets, I would need to find international races, ideally in countries where I’ve never run.  That gets increasingly difficult.  The fall schedule is already getting crowded.

It’s also possible that one or more of these races will still go on as planned.  That’s not really much different than the second possibility.  At this point, I have no intention of traveling to Europe to run a marathon until the situation improves.  I don’t want to get infected, I don’t want to infect other people, and I don’t want to be quarantined because I traveled to Europe.  The only reason I don’t cancel my plans now is because I’m waiting to see if the races get rescheduled.

My lifestyle is all about traveling and running marathons.  For now, that’s on hold.  It could be worse.  Some people will be inconvenienced far more than I will.  Some people will lose their jobs or their businesses.  Some people will die.