We knew the cancellation was coming, but I agree -- why did Marty Walsh make the call this early?
Don't forget, on Feb. 29 and March 1, we had thousands of people from across the country in Atlanta for the Olympic Trials and the Atlanta Marathon, at a point in time when there was certainly community spread/transmission already occurring. I wish they would have engaged in some sort of analysis of that event and likely transmission and also thought a bit more about how to hold some sort of in-person race.
I don't see how April 2021 is likely to occur -- what's the difference between September 2020 and April 2021? Despite what some politicians have (over)promised, it seems unlikely there's going to be a widely available vaccine by Jan/Feb 2021, when they'd have to make a call on the race, and Marty said at the press conference this afternoon that anything even close to resembling normal life won't occur "until there's a vaccine." The only potential difference I see is that the nation's mood shifts this fall: massive quarantine/social distancing fatigue, a pushback against Democratic governors' restrictions in swing states, and a slow realization that, even when you underestimate deaths in LTC homes, nearly half of the 100,000 deaths that have occurred have been in those settings, not in the general population, and certainly not in the working-age population. I don't know that that realization will come quickly enough to the Boston area to save 2021...