Coronavirus in N.Y.: Without Chinese Tourists, Business Sags

Today would be good time to get some fried rice for lunch. Our Chinese friends would appreciate your not treating them like pariahs.

Bats in caves, snakes eat dead fallen bats (I saw a nature show), snakes are eaten by all kind of things that hang in a Chinese market, and people kiss. Calling it three months and cold season, this pandemic is as serious as it gets when I fear enough to wear gloves to handle products at work from China. I used to live in Hawaii when Japanese tourism was happily enjoyed but I feared now that, as reports show, all likes of Asians are in suspect. Now, this is where trump comes in, it's winter and the Chinese need food now. Can the US farmers supply food now or must the Chinese look to the southern hemisphere? I can only say, "let's wait and see", as the coronavirus starts to affect the US economy.

There are still Chinese tourist groups roaming around. I am on vacation and have seen them because non-native Chinese travel in large groups. There is no self quarantining going on. Has the State Department deemed them safe? The incubation period for this Virus is a couple of weeks. We likely now have a reservoir waiting to emerge. Especially on the West Coast.

Really? Chinese businesses outside of China are more important than human lives?

I'm sure this is having an impact, not just in NYC but in countries all around the globe where Chinese tourists have been flocking to in recent years. I'd venture to say though that the unconstrained spread of the virus around the world would have a far greater impact. So hotels, restaurants and tour group companies will take a financial hit by the drop in Chinese tourists but far better for all of us if we don't become an epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak.

The word from financial analysts, economists, and historians, has been that an economic correction was well overdue. From Robert Wolff to Ray Dalio, the message has been clear: prepare for a major correction in the world economy. My opinion is that 2019-nCov is a good thing and more so on this election year. DJT's administration has decreased funding of the CDC and Republicans don't care about the general public's healthcare. Both of which can contribute to an epidemic in the USoA. The object lesson from 2019-nCov will have longterm benefits on both sides of the Pacific. My hope is that the outbreak in China will add wind to Bernie's sails, as he's the most decisive candidate when it comes to healthcare. Countries like South Korea and Japan have established exotic foods markets, but the care and hygiene at say, the Toyosu Market in Tokyo, deservedly shames food handling practices in China. I don't want to see sharks or dolphins slaughtered to suit Japanese palates, any more than I want to see pangolins or totoabas made extinct, but there is a better way to handle food and maintain cleanliness. China's food and hygiene practices have been laid bare for the world to see and hopefully the West will be wary to re-hitch its cart to their ox. The deaths and suffering are real, and I am sorry, but some humans are only moved to change by object lessons. As a cyclist, I owned every mistake and kissing asphalt is a great motivator to change behavior.

Why CDC is the only lab that can test for coronavirus? How complicated is the test? Who is monitoring the process of transporting a specimen (sputum etc.) from NYC to Atlanta? Who are the brave people that are transmitting a specimen for testing and who is monitoring the process? Oops, I just dropped the Petrie dish...

These pandemics will continue to break out so long as we continue to destroy the planet. Earth is an organism like any other, programmed to survive. After a prehistoric asteroid, the dinosaurs disappeared. Maybe this time it will be humans. I always saw us as an aberration. Read the Hot Zone. It was the most frightening book I ever read.

Casinos will suffer the most so that is not a loss. There are probably thousands more infected and hundreds dead. Who would believe any of the stats from a dictatorship ?

The obviously expatriate Chinese nationals quoted in Barron’s article, who make their living the United States feeding and shepherding Chinese national tourists, sure do whine a lot. Just what are expecting? The Federal government is going to feel sorry for them and begin treating them like Hurricane Katrina victims or 9-11 survivors? Kind of absurd. And in any case what kind of strange business is this? The Chinese tourists leave China, travel to New York and London and then spend their time eating in Chinese restaurants in China towns, then return to China where they also eat in Chinese restaurants. Do they just like air travel? Wouldn’t just be easier and cheaper to board planes in China, fly around in circles over Chinese airspace and then land again?

Then let the Trump administration lift the travel ban on Iran and unfreeze that amazing wealthy nation especially their youth.

It's time like this when you just have to hole yourself up in your 70th floor apartment overlooking Central Park, and wait this thing out.

We're about to find out if this is an uncontrollable pandemic, and you want to talk about the health of the hotel business? And what's up with the title... "Coronavirus in NY". Causing panic much?

There is a Ghanaian proverb loosely translated as .... “If you see your neighbor’s beard on fire, better get a bucket of water and set it next to yours”. Was it not barely a few weeks ago that the commerce secretary Wilbur Ross was reported to have said that the crisis in China would be good for the US? We’re all now beginning to see the ripple effects of this crisis thousands of miles from the epicenter.

This is unwarrantedly alarmist. Where does anyone get off saying that this is worse than SARS even if there were fewer tourists back then? This is not 2005 when the world was caught napping as the Chinese government took months before acknowledging that they had an epidemic on their hands. In contrast this time, the Chinese government has put up the genome sequence within days and it is a question of time - 5-8 weeks - before a vaccine is developed while there is large scale public health interventions being done by the Chinese government.

Praying that this virus somehow brings the trump administration down, doing what our immoral republican Senators wouldn’t do. Sounds far-fetched I know. But I’m remembering how the Obama administration jumped on the Ebola threat with both feet and in so doing, probably averted catastrophe. On the other hand, the trump administration is having so much fun torturing the Democrats that it seems to me their eyes are, in large part, turned away from this threat. Besides, when you don’t believe in science, why believe that urgent response is necessary or even helpful? I will gladly sacrifice my own life to this virus if it would also wipe out the toxic threat to America known as the republicans.

I have never seen so many Chinese in Florida as I have the past two weeks and frankly that’s not a good thing, no more than the ugly Americans were a good thing for the rest of the world when pushy, ill mannered lower and middle class Americans had money to spend circa 1950 and 1960. Merchants may be very glad to take their money but I fail to see how busloads of people taking pictures adds to the quality of life of those already living there. Oh for the years before globalization and cheap airfares, if you visited a foreign country it was special, today you get on a cattle car and visit London you may as well be in San Jose, there is a sameness to everything in the developed world, high rise condos and banks and a Starbucks on every corner save for a few architectural gemstone hardly worth the effort.

I think that the information desert is odd. There is ZERO new information. I can’t remember a time when I have felt this way. It makes me wonder if this thing is WAY WORSE than it s seems!!

And just wait and see how much tourism sags -- and not just Chinese tourism -- when someone in NYC tests positive for that virus, especially if it is that Chinese tourist who had been staying in a Manhattan hotel (or any other tourist for that matter).

Less crowds and lower prices. I guess the old adage is true: Every cloud has a silver lining!

If you are in business you have a good days and bad days and should be prepared for the bad days. The hotels and business people are not suffering losses per se, but unfulfilled expectations, probably of making a lot of money.

It is not sunny every day. A business plan should always take into account unforeseeable but likely to occur events.

I live a short walk from Manhattan's Chinatown, and shop in its stores and at outdoor food stalls quite a bit. I see about the same number of people with masks over their noses and mouths as usual for this time of year. Terribly sorry for the owners and workers at the restaurants: I will go out more, and get takeout more, from places in Chinatown, but there's only one of me.

Hopefully all will be resolved soon for the small Chinese tourism industry. Especially the restaurants. Many are small businesses of hard-working, multigenerational families. A long tourist hiatus would be devastating for them. On the other hand, the high end hotels where many affluent Chinese stay may want to step back and take a look at all the fees they’ve imposed over the last few years for just about everything; internet service, gym usage, service fees and the ubiquitous “ resort” fees. Often I think they deserve to suffer a return to reality, when upon checkout you’re handed a bill with hotel,city and state fees that are astronomical in total. While the majority can pay them, that’s not the point. Let’s hope the free flow of tourists in both directions returns soon. And let’s hope they return to a system that is not continually trying to rip the tourist off. The price of a room should be transparent and inclusive of all fees.

It is a rational response to avoid close contact with visitors from a geographic area where an epidemic is expanding and not under control. We need to be monitoring other geographic areas that may have undetected cases, such as Indonesia, where confirmed cases are absent (there are only unconfirmed reports of cases) but since they also have limited or no testing capability, absence of data does not mean absence of cases.

The angles to this growing story are innumerable. I really see this as a black swan event. First of all, China, the country is closed. Let that sink in fora moment. Second, a disease has been unleashed that has overwhelmed the health care system of a city in China and now threatened an entire globe. That is equally concerning. Third, the reverberations from this event are yet to be seen or even imagined. We are planning on going in a cruise in two weeks---what will happen to the cruise industry when the first coronavirus patient is confirmed in the US. I understand what has happened in Japan but imagine when that comes here. The travel industry, the cruise industry will be just a few of the many casualties. What about all the goods we both import and export? How is that going to work? What happens when things stop shipping from China because manufacturing has stopped? What is the effects going to be on pricing or just general product availability? How is research going to be affected? Product development? Will there be geopolitical realignments? New prejudices unleashed? Will there be new acrimony when things get dire and countries insist on closed borders? In my lifetime, I have never seen an entire country even the size of China roll up their shingle and put out the "Closed" sign. This is not over by a long shot and unlike other natural disasters, it will take imagination to predict how this is going to go.

I think I'm guilty, too. We live here on the border of Chinatown/Little Italy (though it's a little more Chinatown these days). After basketball w/ my 11 yr old son on Mondays, we usually stop by a little hole in the wall dumpling place. But yesterday I said we should get ice cream up in Little Italy instead... Rationally I know it's not likely we'd be exposed to the coronavirus, but sitting in a tightly packed dumpling place frequented by many, just made me think it was easier to avoid it. So I guess I'm guilty of that sort of irrational thinking too... Sort of sad, as it's our regular place and I'm 100% sure that the owner can't afford a drop off in business. I feel bad.

Which is preferable, the health and lives of every American versus deadly disease and a lot of money for the small minority percentage of people who make money from foreign tourism? Only selfish people in tourist industry would trade everyone else's health in order to get more money for themselves. And, only the very foolish in the tourist industry would trade their own health in order to get more money. The people at greatest risk of getting corona virus are people who work in the tourist industry catering to Chinese tourists. For their own selfish protection, they should be leading the campaign to keep the virus out of the US despite losing some of their income.

The article says NY health officials have identified three possible cases of coronavirus among "residents ." One of them was not a resident, at least not a permanent one. She was a Chinese tourist, identified initially as being under 40 and taken by ambulance from her hotel to Bellevue last week. Still no word on her test result?

The coronavirus is a real threat in China and Asia itself, but the worldwide hysteria is borne out of pure Sinophobia, xenophobia and racism. It dredges up old yellow peril nonsense of the Chinese being 'dirtier.' The flu has killed far more in the US, around 10,000, way more than the coronavirus deaths and I've yet to see this type of hysteric xenophobia in response to American's traveling.

A healthy and stable tourist economy builds on a diverse tourist population. If the industry is affected by a single regional incident it is perhaps time for some corrective marketing measures.

In January 2019, Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the Central Party School - the school that grooms future political leaders - in Beijing, in which the president and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party raised the highest alert for party officials to be on guard against "black swan" risks, while keeping watchful for "gray rhino” events and fending them off. He reminded the audience of the state of the economy which was facing deep and complicated changes. His speech couldn't have been more prescient. A “black swan” event refers to an unforeseen occurrence that typically has extreme consequences, while a “gray rhino” is a highly obvious yet ignored threat.

So, maybe prices will go down and other people with less than 6-figure incomes can afford to visit the city now?