Negative Oil Prices? How Is That Even Possible? One economist explains. by Atif Kubursi

It’s hard to believe that the price of any commodity, let alone oil, can dip into negative territory. But that’s just what’s happened to oil prices. 

COVID-19 has prompted lockdowns, shuttered factories and stopped people from travelling. The global economy is contracting.

The pandemic has also reduced global demand for oil by about 29 million barrels a day from about 100 million a year ago. OPEC and other producers agreed to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day, far less than the decrease in demand, leaving a huge surplus of oil on the market and no buyers.

Storage capacity on land has filled up quickly. Many oil-importing countries have stored large quantities of oil, taking advantage of cheap prices that may not last.

Some oil producers, hoping to maintain their market share, have taken to storing their excess oil at sea, leasing tankers at high costs. Some are believed to be paying in excess of US$100,000 per day for each tanker.

Oil prices will come back up

So how have Alberta oil prices and even future prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) slipped into negative territory?

It starts with the futures’ contracts for WTI — oil to be delivered in a few months at today’s price. It lost US$6 a barrel on Monday, fetching US$11.66, but ended the day at -US$37 as holders of future contracts tried to dump their contracts before oil is actually delivered with nowhere to store it.

But Alberta oil, primarily derived from oilsands (referred to as Western Select), typically sells at US$10 to US$15 below the price of WTI, because it has to be extracted from deep rocky terrain. That makes it harder to refine, and it also has to be transported thousands of kilometres to American refineries.

And so Alberta oil prices have become negative in the sense that the benchmark price is now lower than the cost of production, transport and storage.

This state of affairs cannot be expected to last for long. Producers, in the short term, may accept prices below their variable cost as long as they are able to pay some of the costs they will incur even if oil production shuts down.

As time passes, more and more rigs will stop operating (technically, a few will be kept operational in order to avoid being compromised) and a new balance between supply and demand will be established at prices that exceed total average cost. But this doesn’t bode well for either Alberta or the United States.

Collateral damage

Alberta oil is now the collateral damage of the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, with COVID-19 launching an additional attack. Either of these two factors could have disrupted Alberta’s oil production. But the Saudi-Russia hostilities combined with the global pandemic have proven to be catastrophic for Canada, and could have a similar outcome for the U.S. energy industry.

Russia and Saudi Arabia depend heavily on their oil revenues to sustain their economies. Of course, Saudi Arabia’s economy is less diversified than the Russian economy, but both share a similar distortion, where oil revenues represent a very high share of their GDPs (Saudi Arabia about 50 per cent, Russia 38.9 per cent), budgets (Saudi Arabia 87 per cent and Russia 68 per cent) and exports (Saudi Arabia 90 per cent and Russia 59 per cent. It’s difficult to believe that either country can do with such low prices.

Russia needs a price of US$60 a barrel to balance its government budget and even a higher price to balance its current account, meaning exports of goods and services minus imports of goods and services, plus net short-term capital transfers.

Saudis also need a much higher oil price

Saudi Arabia, which remains the lowest-cost oil producer in the world, can make money when the price per barrel exceeds US$20, and Russia can at a price of US$40.

But making a profit when prices are higher than cost is not sufficient. Saudi Arabia needs an US$80-per-barrel price to balance its budget, realize its plans to diversify its economy and sustain a heavily subsidized economy. In the balance is the stability of both the Russian and Saudi Arabian political systems and current regimes.

Yes, Even Buildings May Get Sick Because of Coronavirus Here's how that happens. by Caitlin R. Proctor, Andrew J. Whelton and William Rhoads

While millions of people are under orders to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic, water is sitting in the pipes of empty office buildings and gyms, getting old and potentially dangerous. 

When water isn’t flowing, organisms and chemicals can build up in the plumbing. It can happen in underused gyms, office buildings, schools, shopping malls and other facilities. These organisms and chemicals can reach unsafe levels when water sits in water pipes for just a few days. But, what happens when water sits for weeks or months?

There are no long-term studies of the risks and only minimal guidance to help building owners prepare their water for use again after a long shutdown.

As researchers involved in building water safety, we study these risks and advise building owners and public officials on actions they can take to reduce the potential for widespread waterborne disease. A new paper highlights these issues and our concerns that the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders may increase the chance of harmful water exposure when people return.

What happens when water gets old?

Just like food that sits in a refrigerator for too long, water that sits in a building’s pipes for too long can make people sick.

Harmful organisms, like the bacteria that cause Legionnaire’s disease, can grow. If not maintained, devices like filters, water tanks, heaters and softeners can become organism incubators.

With certain pipe materials, water can accumulate unsafe levels of lead and copper, which can cause learning disabilities, cardiovascular effects, nausea and diarrhea.

Copper can leach from plumbing pipes and valves, as it did in this hotel bathtub. Ingesting water with high levels of copper can cause illnesses. Andrew Whelton, CC BY-ND

Drinking this water is a problem, but infections can also result from inhaling harmful organisms. This occurs when water splashes and becomes an aerosol, as can happen in showers, hot tubs and pools and when flushing toilets or washing hands. Some of these organisms can cause pneumonia-like diseases, especially in people who have weakened immune systems.

Water inside a building does not have an expiration date: Problems can develop within days at individual faucets, and all buildings with low water use are at risk.

Keep the water flowing

To avoid water issues, “fresh” water must regularly flow to a building’s faucets. Most U.S. water providers add a chemical disinfectant to the water they deliver to kill organisms, but this chemical disappears over time.

Medical facilities, with their vulnerable populations, are required to have a building water safety plan to keep water fresh and prevent growth. Schools, which have long periods of low use during the summer, are advised to keep water fresh to reduce water’s lead levels.

Health agencies in the U.S., Canada, England, Europe and some states have released recommendations in recent weeks, advising that building water be kept fresh during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. There’s some debate over the best way to do that, but the core message is the same: Do not let water sit in buildings.

If water isn’t being used in a building, intentionally flushing the building to replace all the old water with new water can be done at least weekly. It also helps remove sediments that accumulate along pipe walls.

Faucets, water heaters and softeners, appliances such as refrigerators, toilets and other water systems, including cooling towers, all need to have water turnover. Some of these can require specialized attention. Faucet aerators should be removed because they accumulate materials and slow down the flow.

How long flushing takes depends on the building’s piping design, devices and the speed of water exiting the faucets. All buildings are different.

It took more than 80 minutes of flushing to draw fresh water to the farthest faucet of one 10,000-square-foot building. In another building, it took 60 minutes just to get fresh water from the water meter to the basement of a building 30 feet from the street. A single large building may take hours or days to clear.

Easier to avoid contamination than clean it up

For building managers who haven’t been running the water during the pandemic, the water sitting in pipes may already have significant problems. To perform flushing, safety equipment, including masks, currently in short supply, might be needed to protect workers.

A slow “ramp-up” of the economy means buildings will not reach normal water use for some time. These buildings may need flushing again and again.

Shock disinfection, adding a high level of disinfectant chemical to the plumbing to kill organisms living in it, may also be necessary. This is required for new buildings and is sometimes done when water in new buildings sits still for too long.

Cut-open shower pipes reveal a biofilm with metal deposits. Caitlin Proctor/Purdue University, CC BY-ND

Inexpensive chemical disinfectant tests can help determine if the water is “fresh.” Testing for harmful organisms is recommended by some organizations. It can take several days and requires expertise to interpret results. Metals testing might be needed, too. Public health departments can provide specific recommendations for all of these actions and communication of risks.

The need for standards and water safety

Water left sitting in the pipes of buildings can present serious health risks.

Standards are lacking and very much needed for restarting plumbing and ensuring continued water safety after the pandemic passes.

Right now, building managers can take immediate action to prevent people from becoming sick when they return.

When Will Canada End the Coronavirus Lockdown and Reopen For Business? There is no easy answer. by Catharine Chambers

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. Since then, many regions around the world — including all Canadian provinces and territories — have declared states of emergency and implemented strict public health measures, effectively putting cities under lockdown. 

Canadians for the most part have adapted to this “new normal.” But as many of us are now well into our second month of social distancing, fatigue is setting in. People are grappling with unemployment or reduced work hours and the economy is suffering its worst downturn in decades. It’s not surprising that many people might be asking: When will this end?

There is no easy answer to this question. Despite mathematical projections and expert opinions, the reality is: we don’t know.

Surveillance signals

Global COVID-19 cases now top two million.

But there are promising signs that the public health actions we’ve taken are working. Although cases are still increasing in Canada, they are doing so at a slower rate than two to three weeks ago. Our hospitals and intensive care units are not overwhelmed, as they were in areas such as Italy or New York where interventions weren’t implemented soon enough.

But it’s too early to tell if we’ve reached the peak of the first epidemic wave.

That’s because the surveillance trends we’re seeing today actually represent a snapshot of the pandemic from about two weeks ago. It can take five days on average for someone infected with COVID-19 to develop symptoms, and even longer for someone who is symptomatic to seek health care, get tested and be reported to public health authorities.

On top of that, due to limited testing, reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg of infections in the community.

We will likely need to see a sustained reduction in the number of new daily cases over multiple weeks and consistent trends across multiple data sources before social distancing measures can start to be lifted.

Necessary conditions

But a decrease in the number of new cases will not be enough. Certain conditions will also need to be in place before our public health interventions can start to be relaxed.

According to the World Health Organization, it will depend on a number of factors, including whether the spread of COVID-19 is controlled through population-wide measures like social distancing and whether our health-care systems have the capacity to detect, test and isolate cases and trace their contacts.

It will require additional measures in place to prevent outbreaks in high-risk settings like long-term care homes where nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in Canada have taken place. And it will require preventive measures to be set up in essential settings like workplaces and schools along with ongoing efforts to manage risks from imported cases.

Most importantly, it will require community education, engagement and empowerment. It will require striking the right balance between our collective responsibility to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our communities and an individual’s willingness to engage in social distancing over the long term.

Public health decision-making

This is an evolving situation.

Public health officials are making decisions using the best available evidence about this novel virus and adjusting their strategies as new evidence becomes available.

Decisions about when to start reopening society are multifaceted. They should prioritize the health of Canadians while at the same time minimizing the economic and societal impacts of these necessary public health measures.

These decisions should be clearly communicated to the public and based on scientific data, not political rhetoric.

Because of geographic variations in the timing of the pandemic, we can expect that different provinces or countries will reopen at different times — for example, in early hot spots like Spain and Iran where some restrictions are already being lifted, or as recently announced for some parts of the United States.

Another more likely scenario is that these public health interventions will be turned on and off over a prolonged period depending on our health-care system’s capacity to care for the sickest patients at each successive epidemic wave.

Serological tests — which check the blood for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — would give us some indication of how many people in the population remain susceptible, which could inform our public health response. Such tests were recently approved in the U.S. and should be available soon in Canada.

Importantly, while these public health interventions seem as though they came in overnight, there will be a more gradual return to a somewhat normal life. If these measures are eased too fast or too early, we could see a rebound of cases that would again risk overwhelming our health-care systems.

The way forward

So, when will the pandemic end?

We are seeing positive signs of “flattening the curve” for this initial wave in some Canadian provinces like B.C., where social distancing measures may start to be relaxed as early as mid-May. But as with prior influenza pandemics, we might also anticipate a second fall wave or seasonal circulation of COVID-19 since the majority of people are not yet immune.

The true end to the pandemic will most likely not happen until a vaccine is developed — a scenario that is still at least 12 to 18 months away — or herd immunity is achieved.

Once The Planet's Largest Warship, USS Midway Fought For America For 50 Years The Reagan administration’s military buildup kept the aging carriers on duty through 1980s, flying older F-4S Phantoms and A-7 Corsairs. by Sebastien Roblin

As the Midway-class carriers expanded in size they never entirely shed their early design flaws. Yet they repeatedly adapted to new technological paradigms and rendered history-making service for nearly a half-century—a record any ship designer would envy. 

On March 20, 1945 the shipyard in Newport News, Virginia launched what would remain for a decade the largest warship on the planet. Named USS Midway after the decisive World War II carrier battle, she would be commissioned September 8 just a few weeks after the Japanese surrender.

Few of the over four-thousand-man complement departing on Midway’s first patrol could have imagined that same ship—admittedly, in drastically modified form—would be sailing into combat forty-six years later, her deck laden with supersonic jet fighters.

Midway was joined a month later by New York-built sistership USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (or ‘Rosey’), the first U.S. carrier to be named after a former U.S. president. The last ship of the class, USS Coral Sea, was launched in 1947.

The Midway-class was meant to be a "beefier battle carrier" compared to the twenty-four Essex-class carriers that entered service in the latter half of World War II. Naval engineers particularly sought to introduce an armored flight deck. British carriers with armored decks proved more resilient and quicker to recover from dive bombing and kamikaze attacks that crippled U.S. flattops. But armored flight decks were also considerably heavier, limiting deck size and number of aircraft carried.

The American engineers went big to get both deck armor and more planes. The Midway measured longer than three football fields and could carry an unprecedented 130 aircraft: four squadrons of gull-winged Corsair fighters and three of Helldiver bombers. Three-and-a-half inches of armor plating protected her flight deck, while eighteen five-inch 52-caliber guns were mounted to blast attacking aircraft from afar. Sixty-eight rapid-firing 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter cannons provided close protection.

The ships could attain 33 knots powered by twelve boilers turning four Westinghouse steam turbines, but consumed 100,000 gallons of fuel daily, necessitating refueling every three days.

Indeed, the Midway-class’s sheer size caused numerous problems. 130 aircraft proved too many to effectively coordinate, so their air wings were downsized back to 100. Their huge crews made life onboard especially crowded. And the carrier’ great weight left them riding low in the water, causing excessive seawater to slosh on deck and flood gunwells. The unwieldy vessels tended to plow through waves rather than riding above them—once resulting in one of Midway’s aircraft elevators being torn off during a storm.

The Midways arrived just as the Navy was exploring how to adapt to the dawning jet- and nuclear-age. In 1946, an XFD-1 Phantom jet landed on the Roosevelt’s deck, the first ever planned jet-powered landing on a carrier. A year later, the Midway test-launched a Nazi V-2 ballistic missile off her deck, the first such large rocket fired from a moving ship. Then in 1949, a P2V Privateer patrol plane carrying a 5-ton bomb load took off from the deck of Coral Sea boosted by JATO rocket packs—proving that a nuclear-capable aircraft could be based on a carrier. The following year, the Roosevelt became the first carrier to carry nuclear weapons.

Landing fast and heavy jets remained a major challenge, as demonstrated in a famous 1951 recording of an F9F Panther on the Midway striking the ramp while landing, slicing the front of the fuselage from the plane and sending it rolling down the deck. Amazingly, pilot George Chamberlain survived.

Safer, sustainable jet operations required a larger flight deck. In the mid-1950s, the Midways underwent SC-110 refits replacing their “strait” decks with a longer “angled” configuration incorporating additional steam catapults, increasing deck size and displacement considerably. The formerly open hangar deck below was enclosed, and new radars, a “mirror” landing system, and strengthened elevators to lift heavier aircraft were installed.

The class missed action over Korea, though Midway did assist in evacuating thousands of Chinese Nationalists in the wake of the Battle of Yijiangshan island. The three Midway-class carriers finally saw combat in Vietnam, by which time two-seat F-4B Phantom II fighters capable of flying twice the speed of sound were catapulting off their flight decks.

On June 17, 1965, two Phantoms from VF-21 detected bogeys” on radar, in an engagement described in Peter Davie’s U.S. Navy Phantom Units of the Vietnam War.

The Phantoms carried radar-guided AIM-7D Sparrow missiles which had a long minimum range—but were required to visually identify enemies before firing! Pilots Louis Page and David Batson used a tactic in which one Phantom charged towards the incoming jets, causing them to pull away and reveal their profile—four MiG-17s, slower but highly maneuverable Soviet-built jets. Batson and Page’s Sparrow missiles each splashed a MiG. A third was destroyed after its engines sucked in debris from its wingmates.

A year later on June 20, 1966, four Midway-based A-1H Skyraiders, old-fashioned piston-engine ground attack planes, was on a search-and-rescue mission when they were warned of two approaching MiG-17s. The Skyraiders flew in circles hugging the side of a mountain for cover. The MiGs swooped down spitting cannon shells at the lead Skyraider—but the two A-1s behind him pulled up and raked the jets with 20-millimeter cannons, shooting one down in one of the unlikelier kills of the conflict.

The Coral Sea, which was officially adopted by the city of San Francisco, also saw extensive action over Vietnam, though not all of her crew were happy about it. Some famously circulated a petition opposing the war, and three hundred participated in a peace march.

The two carriers remained involved to the very end, however. In 1972, aircraft from Midway and Coral Sea mined Haiphong harbor and blasted a North Vietnamese land offensive—measures which ostensibly pressured Hanoi into the ceasefire at the Paris peace conferences. Then on January 12, 1973, an F-4J based on the Midway shot down another MiG-17 in the last air-to-air kill of the Vietnam War.

That same year, the Coral Sea ferried Phantom jet fighters to Israel during the Yom Kippur war and Midway became the first U.S. carrier to have its home port deployed overseas to Japan, reducing operating costs and keeping sailors’ families closer.

The carriers were involved in additional adventures. When the government of South Vietnam fell in 1975, helicopters from the Midway and Coral Sea rescued over 3,000 Vietnamese fleeing northern troops. Famously, Vietnamese Major Buang flew to the Midway in a dinky O-1 observation plane with his wife and five children crowded inside, and dropped a message indicating he wanted to land. As the O-1 circled overhead, Captain Larry Chamber tossed helicopters overboard to make room and turned the ship into the wind. Finally, Buang landed the overloaded Cessna to the applause of the crew (see a recording here).

Coral Sea subsequently dispatched A-7 and F-4N jets to attack Khmer Rouge forces and recovered helicopters carrying U.S. Marines during the disastrous Mayaguez hostage-rescue operation.

By then, the Midways were growing long in the tooth, lacking the deck space for new F-14 Tomcat interceptors and S-3 Viking anti-submarine jets. This led to the decommissioning of the Roosevelt in 1977. On her final cruise, she experimentally carried the Marine Harrier jump jets of VMA-231.

Meanwhile, the Midway’s decks were further expanded until they resembled a weird jigsaw puzzle piece, though the Coral Sea retained a “straighter” configuration. Their carriers gun batteries were replaced with Sea Sparrow missile launchers and automated Phalanx close-in-weapon systems.

The Reagan administration’s military buildup kept the aging carriers on duty through 1980s, flying older F-4S Phantoms and A-7 Corsairs. However, they also received brand-new FA-18 Hornet multi-role jets with modern avionics that could land on shorter flight decks.

FA-18s from the Coral Sea repeatedly intercepted Libyan MiGs over the Mediterranean. Finally in 1986, they flew the Hornet’s first combat mission, using a HARM radar-homing missile to destroy an S-200 surface-to-air missile battery in Sirte, Libya, in retaliation for a terrorist attack in Berlin. The Midway, meanwhile received new hull blisters designed to stabilize her.

The Coral Sea, nicknamed “Ageless Warrior,” was finally retired in 1990 and scrapped in Baltimore. But the Midway, despite an unsuccessful hull-blister upgrade that actually worsened the “Rock’n Roll” carrier’s long-running instability and a deadly explosive accident in 1990, still had one more war left in her. Deployed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, she launched 3,339 combat sorties. Her A-6E Intruder jets were amongst the first to hit Iraqi targets in the conflict, and her helicopters even liberated a Kuwaiti island.

Finally, on April 11, 1992—forty-seven years after she had been launched—the Midway was decommissioned. Today she serves as a museum ship in San Diego.

As the Midway-class carriers expanded in size they never entirely shed their early design flaws. Yet they repeatedly adapted to new technological paradigms and rendered history-making service for nearly a half-century—a record any ship designer would envy.

Why The French Navy Just Sent All Of Its Amphibious Assault Ships Out To Sea Pandemic response. by David Axe

The Mistral surge, part of the French military’s Operation Resilience, represents one of the most concerted efforts by a navy to deploy its bigger vessels for pandemic relief. 

The French navy has mobilized all three of its Mistral-class amphibious assault ships and is deploying them across Europe, Asia and the Americas in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The mobilization of the assault ships Mistral and Dixmude on March 25, 2020 came just five days after the French fleet sent sister vessel Tonnerre to Corsica to transport coronavirus patients to hospitals in mainland France.

The Mistral surge, part of the French military’s Operation Resilience, represents one of the most concerted efforts by a navy to deploy its bigger vessels for pandemic relief.

French President Emmanuel Macron described Resilience as an “unprecedented military operation dedicated to supporting public services and the French people in the fields of health, logistics and protection.”

Mistral will support the French territory of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The ship already was in the region for training when the government announced the pandemic-relief operation. Dixmude at the time of the announcement was in the Mediterranean Sea but will sail west to aid France’s Carribean territories.

Displacing just 21,500 tons, a Mistral obviously possesses less medical capacity than does a U.S. Navy hospital ship displacing 60,000 tons. But the French assault ships like many amphibious vessels nonetheless possess advanced medical facilities compared to other warships.

A Mistral boasts two operating rooms, an x-ray room, a dental office, scanners, 20 patient rooms and 69 patient beds including seven for intensive care. It’s possible to add 50 temporary beds to a Mistral’s hangar.

Tonnerre’s crew reportedly added isolation equipment to some of its facilities in order to protect themselves from infection during their Corsica mission.

It’s unclear exactly what the French ships will do to help coronavirus patients. It’s worth noting that the U.S. Navy activated its two hospital ships and is deploying them to American cities to help reinforce hospitals anticipating a spike in coronavirus patients.

Mercy is heading for Los Angeles. Comfort is on the way to New York City. The vessels won’t actually treat coronavirus patients. Rather, they will handle non-virus trauma cases in order to free up beds and personnel in civilian hospitals.

The U.S. Navy’s own 33 amphibious ships, in particular its 10 big-deck Wasp- and America-class vessels, also could perform a pandemic-response role. The 40,000-ton amphibs have even more medical capacity than the Mistrals do. Wasps and Americas can handle as many as 600 patients at a time.

But at present, the American amphibs are making the pandemic worse, not better. The U.S. Navy’s first coronavirus cases were among the crew of USS Boxer, a Wasp-class vessel.

The United Kingdom for its part has decided that it’s more efficient to deploy its military-medical forces on land. Contrary to some media reports, the Royal Navy’s casualty-receiving ship Argus isn’t deploying to London to bolster the city’s hospitals as the coronavirus continues to ravage the United Kingdom.

The U.K. military is focusing on setting up a makeshift hospital at London’s ExCel conference center. The military calls the facility “National Health Service Nightingale.”

Coronavirus Shock: Why Global Tourism May Shrink by More Than 50% The study showed that 63.8% of the travelers will reduce their travel plans in the next 12 months. by Faizan Ali Cihan and Cobanoglu

Due to the coronavirus, people around the world have canceled their travel plans. Governments and health officials have warned the public to avoid boarding cruise ships and long flights. Major events like conferences, trade shows and the Olympics have been canceled or postponed. 

As a result, many businesses in the travel and tourism industry are likely to find themselves in jeopardy.

Predicting the economic impact of the coronavirus right now is akin to participating in a running competition without knowing how long the course is. However, a few things are already clear.

Our study

We conducted a study during the third week of March with more than 2,000 travelers from 28 countries. Via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we asked respondents about their travel behaviors during the pandemic.

Our study showed that 63.8% of the travelers will reduce their travel plans in the next 12 months. More than half canceled their business travel immediately due to the coronavirus.

Results of our study predict that, compared to last year, the travel industry, which includes businesses such as airlines, hotels and restaurants, will shrink by 50% in 2020, which would mean a significant loss of jobs and revenue.

The number of international travelers could shrink from 1.4 billion to fewer than 1 billion people. That would be the first time the international traveler number has fallen that low since 2015.

We also asked respondents to rate their perceived image of China and Italy, two of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. Interestingly, U.S. travelers’ image of China and Italy has deteriorated. The image of China was damaged most significantly, as some people blame China for the spread of the virus.

However, we expect that this image may recover soon, as research shows that travelers have a short memory about the negative aspects of a destination after a disaster.

Sizing up the impact

The travel industry has faced many challenges in the past, including the 9/11 attacks and the Great Recession, but none are similar in magnitude to the coronavirus. For example, the travel industry shrank by 31.6% after 9/11.

In the U.S, the travel and tourism industry generated US$1.6 trillion in 2017 in economic output.

A study from Tourism Economics, a company that consults in the tourism sector, predicts that the U.S. tourism industry will lose at least $24 billion in 2020, thanks to a widespread loss of spending at restaurants, hotels, theme parks and more.

The World Travel and Tourism Council, which represents the global private sector of Travel & Tourism, predicts up to 50 million jobs in the global travel industry could be lost.

While the economic impact of the coronavirus is significant, its impact on people’s social interaction, too, will likely be felt for years to come.