just gonna drop this nugget of a quote here:
’ “I think people haven’t understood that this isn’t about the next couple of weeks,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. “This is about the next two years.” ’
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#Rome
Agreed and excellent point.
My oldest and middle daughter have both had their senior years in school (one college, the other high school) wrecked by this damn virus. I don’t have the heart yet to tell my middle daughter that the likelihood is that she will not be starting college this year. She is still trying to accept the wreck of this year. No need to pile on at this point…
Agree 110%. Much like tackling a hard workout, race or difficult event… breaking it into smaller, more manageable pieces is “easier” for our minds.
Nobody is supposed to be happy about the loss of our old normal, or the potential of what the new normal will be, but we have to make our baby steps forward and get to that one way or another.
Whew, how’s that for heading off topic 
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To give ASO et al a break, they may have legal stipulations which force them to reschedule events before they outright cancel. So the TdF action, unlike the already cancelled/not-rescheduled ASO Classics, might just be to appease sponsors etc. Perhaps yet another example of money > people.
yeah maybe it’s also a bit of “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t fire”. It’s probably easier to cancel an event, than to put one on in a weeks notice, in the off chance a window opens. However small the chances may be.
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its also the only way that governments can maintain some version of control. We are undertaking the largest social experiment in human history. Never before have governments without the use of force contained populations like this. But they can only do it if 1) there is a credible threat, and 2) there is a potential end date whereby if people behave they get let out
You tell people we are shut down for a year, we will have looting in the streets and absolute anarchy erupting. Hell North Carolina and Michigan are already staging protests because they want to go back to work. That right to bear arms is going to get reaaaaaal interesting in the coming months.
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A year?! Heck, locally, within the first couple of weeks of shutdown there was a B&E spree of the unoccupied downtown businesses. Human nature and all.
Yeah, I could not spell colosseum on short notice but that was the thought.
The only form of the Tour I’m envisioning in 2020:
Interesting but I think you can also pull some quotes from him where he was potentially completely wrong:
From his interview with Joe Rogan:
Joe Rogan: (18:01)
All right, well so much for that myth. Myth number two. Well I won’t say myth, I should say rumor, was that this was something from some sort of a biological weapons thing that was leaked because Wuhan is some area, a part of China, that they actually do work on biological weapons.
Michael Osterholm: (18:21)
And we’ve heard that loud and clear. And let me just give a little bit background and more of my career. Back in the early 1990s I got very involved in the whole area of bio-defense and bio-terrorism, bio-warfare. It turned out I was involved with helping to interview and get information from some of the Russian bio-weaponeers. After the wall fell and Russia collapsed, we had all these experts coming out who’d been spending their whole lives making bio-weapons and it became very clear to me that this was really a serious challenge. And as part of my work, I spent a lot of time in this area and I actually, through a series of serendipitous events, became a personal advisor to his majesty, King Hussein of Jordan, before he died, on this topic. I got really into it.
Michael Osterholm: (19:06)
I wrote a book that was published on nine 11 of 2000 called Living Terrorist, What Our Country Needs to Survive the Coming Bio-terrorist Catastrophe. And I think I bought eight of the 12 copies that were sold in that year afterwards. And then when 9/11 happened, of course, then it became really prominent. And then I went on to serve on a group here in the United States that was basically the national science advisory board on bio-security, safety issues. So I’ve had a lot of experience in this area. And so I bring that to the table and I tell you there is no evidence whatsoever that this is a bio-weapon or that it was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab.
Now we have this:
Covid-19 released from Wuhan lab?
(CNN)US intelligence and national security officials say the United States government is looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter who caution it is premature to draw any conclusions.
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So we probably don’t know collectively as much as we presume to know, even for the experts in the field. Maybe the origin wasn’t in a Wuhan lab, maybe it was. Pretty clear at this point no one knows for sure including Dr. Osterholm.
As with the Tour, I fully admit to having no idea whether it will go on for 2020. There are a lot of posts here with strong opinions that came out as statements of fact, superior knowledge, intuition and insight. Obviously the organizers and teams thought it best to try and delay the Tour in hopes it may happen. Whether it does or does not, it isn’t such a bad thing to remain optimistic and hopeful. If it doesn’t, then it will be for good reason as well.
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not gonna take the bait on this one 
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Me either 
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By way of off topic non-sequitur,
I’ll bet the TR forum members who do best mentally in a Covid 19 environment are the same people who FTP test with an hour of power while staring at a wall in silence because “that’s all you need. Man”.
(insert smile face)
Vive le Tour !!
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Ummm…guilty? 
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I think if we want this race to happen we just have to agree to do whatever it takes to stay safe as fans, spectators and athletes. A few ideas seen of late:
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Its just after 3pm and I’m going on a 10 hour work day over here, exactly what I needed. Had to forward those three pics with my own goofy captions to our extended family gathered two doors away as the stress level was super high just 2 hours ago as everyone waited to hear from surgeon about mother-in-law’s heart valve replacement. She made it and in recovery 
Embrace life and live each day to the fullest 
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Great to hear! 
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Great news. Best wishes for her speedy recovery.
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It could be a good thing to let it collapse…
The stress of the pandemic is already showing the weaknesses in cycling’s sponsorship model