More about the APS meeting(s) and covid-19

Just to follow up:

• The APS is partnering with the Virtual March Meeting, as well as collecting talks and slides and linking them to the online meeting program.  
• There is going to be a Virtual Science Forum this afternoon (Eastern Standard Time, Friday, March 6) using zoom as a meeting platform, featuring what would have been March Meeting invited talks by Florian Marquardt, Eun-Ah Kim, and Steve Girvin.
• The APS is working on refunds.  All told, the society is going to lose millions of dollars on this.
• I am very surprised that the webpage for the APS April Meeting does not, as of this writing, have anything on it at all about this issue.  I've already passed on my strong suggestion that they at least put up a notice that says "We are closely monitoring the situation and will make a firm decision about the status of the meeting by [date]."  
• The ACS has a notice on their page about their national meeting scheduled for Philadelphia on March 22-26.  I'm rather surprised that they are still going ahead. Update:  ACS has now cancelled their spring meeting.
• The MRS seems to have nothing up yet regarding their April meeting.

People tend to have poor intuition about exponential functions.  I'm not an alarmist, but it's important to consider:  total US cases of covid-19 today are the level Wuhan was seven weeks ago. Hopefully measures people are taking (social distancing, hand washing, dropping non-critical travel) plus seasonality of illness plus lower population density plus fewer smokers will help keep things comparatively manageable. The US government realistically will not take some of the steps taken by the Chinese government (e.g., wholesale travel restrictions, military-enforced quarantines).