March 9, 2020
The first U.S. case of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was confirmed on January 20, 2020. Since then, national government officials and agencies have equivocated about whether or not the virus really poses a nationwide threat and whether or not society and business will be disrupted as a result.
In the past few days, the situation appears to be gathering momentum — and in the wrong direction — with a rapidly increasing number of schools, conferences, and other gatherings and events getting being cancelled in cities across the country.
- South by Southwest — the 160,000+ person event that has been held every year for 34 years in Austin, Texas — was formally cancelled for the first time in its history.
- More than 20 U.S. colleges and universities have announced closures, including New York City’s Columbia University.
- Tech giants such as Facebook and Google, alongside countless other companies, have cancelled extremely high-profile business conferences and events.
- Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have asked their Seattle-based employees to work from home, and many more companies are preparing to follow suit across the country.
- Renowned venture investment firm Sequoia Capital has posted a dire warning to its portfolio companies. The last time it did something like this was at the outset of the 2008 financial crisis.
Given our 24/7 focus on all things China, The China Project has been covering the coronavirus epidemic since its very inception in Wuhan, China, over two months ago. This, combined with the fact that we are a U.S.-based company with most of our employees based in cities across the U.S., made us want to bring our normally China-focused coverage to bear on this important global matter as it begins to hit closer to home.
We will aggregate the most important daily updates from more than 150 news and information sources around the world so you can know the latest without quitting your day job. We will also send you breaking news alerts, if and when something sufficiently urgent is taking place.
- Don’t forget to read our coronavirus archives that detail the development of the epidemic from the very start.
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