Can an educated voice weigh in on what the likelihood of the parks being closed down due to the coronavirus is? My holiday is at end of May. Whether they close from fear induced overreaction or genuine need I don't care, I just want to know whether my worries about the parks closing have any basis? I have rented DVC points and have just been told by my insurer that they wont cover in the case of a shut down and so I'm screwed if it happens.
@marni1971 @lentesta @wdwmagic or anyone with insight, please tell me how much I should be drinking tonight to make myself feel better
Disclaimer: I probably don't know anything about this.
Here's what I'm telling our staff: The only scenario I can think of where the domestic parks close for an extended period of time is: (1) If the virus spreads significantly faster and with more lethal results, than seasonal flu has with a non-vulnerable population; (2) the federal and state response appears insufficient; (3) no promising vaccine is close to deployment.
I think that Tokyo's closure was influenced somewhat by Olympics prep in addition to immediate safety concerns. From a labor perspective, they wouldn't be able to finish work for the summer games now, if a chunk of their construction workers get sick. Don't get me wrong - there's obviously an immediate public safety concern. But Tokyo's government has additional things to consider that, say, Paris doesn't.
The reasons I think any domestic closure would be short are (1) the virus seems most lethal in vulnerable populations, and those folks can self-select out of voluntary travel; (2) the parks would be under enormous federal and state pressure to be open. For one thing, they're large regional employers with massive supply chains. The economic impact of a long-term closure would be substantial. I think the feds and the state would weigh that against the virus' impact to well-informed, presumably healthier, voluntary visitors.
Not for nothing, but if the feds have to choose between temporarily nationalizing the supply and manufacture of antiretroviral medicines (which seem to help treat this virus), and huge economic disruptions to daily lives, they're going to distribute the medicines without a second thought. Again, probably to vulnerable populations first, but that will still have a significant positive impact.
If I recall correctly, domestic parks re-opened two days after 9/11. And I think President Bush personally asked Eisner to do that, to begin restoring a sense of day-to-day normalcy to Americans' lives. The same thing would be considered here.
For your trip, Disney would almost certainly allow you to move your trip in the event of a shutdown. I wouldn't worry at all about that. And you've got plenty of time between now and then.
In the next few days we should hear about a large number of cases detected in the U.S. That should be expected based on the expanded testing we're doing, and what we know about how the virus spreads. Don't be especially alarmed by that.
The things I'm keeping an eye on are the contagion rate and the lethality in otherwise healthy populations, in the U.K., France, Canada, and U.S.
I think the lethality rate for seasonal flu is something like 0.1%, with a contagion rate of a little over 1 (which means that 1 person with the flu will give it to slightly more than 1 person on average). If the COVID numbers in the U.S. are closer to the seasonal flu than current estimates out of China, then the impact should be less here.
Again, I probably don't know anything about this.
