South by Southwest... but you’re not far off of what actually happens there.
But
@FogBlueInSanFran is right, it’s the near equivalent of cancelling Glastonbury a week before it’s set to open.
My brother- and sister-in-law are in an up-and-coming band touring the US right now and, on top of being involved in a horrific 100 car accident in Wyoming that saw several people killed (although they are all mostly ok) and their tour coach smashed, and facing the prospect of many of their upcoming tour dates being cancelled due to virus responses, their marquee time slot at SXSW — that was going to give them quite a lot of exposure to bigger label agents and a decent junk of their annual income — has now obviously been sacked off.
The festival is actually the source of a large portion of the annual revenue for the tourist/service industry in Austin, Texas, were it happens each year, not to mention the various mid-to-small vendors that scaled operations for the festival, many of whom are now in the shit with merchandise they won’t be able to shift, at least not quickly and for the dosh they were expecting. It’s their Black Friday of sorts.
And this, of course, is just one of the minor impacts of the public health response, which is absolutely needed (as I have said on here quite a few times), but still has a very real impact on people’s livelihoods. There are many more serious negative economic impacts — I am just describing this one in detail as I was talking to my brother-in-law and their band manager about it yesterday, and it prompted me to do a bit of research on the festival and the general reaction to it being cancelled. Their manager is absolutely struggling to keep up with all of the upcoming venue notices of possible or confirmed cancellations due to the virus response, as well as the fall out from that horrible accident, which includes my sister-in-law, who suffers from depression and anxiety disorders, having serious difficult moving past it as she was driving at the time the accident happened. From the pictures and videos it really was a horrific ordeal for all involved, but they had to work to just get on with the tour as they need the money, especially as they now need to make up any losses from the coach being all but written off and having the rent one for the remainder of the now curtailed tour.
It is but one example of why governments have been so slow to respond, as they are in a terrible position: restrict the response to limit the impact to the economy (as a downturn would hurt people around the world) but potentially allow the virus to then spread, due huge amounts of harm (including killing the most vulnerable), and potentially destroy the economy anyway or launch a comprehensive response that helps limit the spread of the virus and the harm it causes but also negatively impacting the economy which will have cascading effects over time that will also do real harm to people (and have an overall impact on health in its own way).
They are very much damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I just personally advocate for preventing as much direct, immediate harm to people first, and solve the problems that arise from that later. And that comes from someone trained and working in the economics field — my humanist side overrides the cold, calculating one.
