 Now for my thoughts on the coronavirus and spring marathons 2020 and then the Tokyo Olympics this summer. Test test test one, two, three. Okay, we're rolling here in the studio. I'm listening to your comments, your thoughts, your questions, your concerns. Who would have thought that four to six weeks ago, we would be in a situation where we're talking about the Tokyo Olympics potentially being canceled or postponed, not to mention other races happening this spring in the next couple of months that many of you are training for, okay? I wasn't planning to bring this topic up and this is not a typical vlog, but the resounding call for me to address this is becoming more and more apparent on Facebook, Twitter, and yes, here on YouTube. So that is what I'm going to do. Dive into the coronavirus. COVID-19 is another way to say it and I will say I'm recording this on March 6th, 2020. The situation could change overnight. You all know that. Also, I'm not a doctor, not a medical professional. Just putting that out there. I'm just a runner, a fan of the sport who's trying to train for his own races and trying to give my opinion on what I think will happen over the next six months. And I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well down in the comments. And I'm going to be pulling some information from not too much, but a little bit from the CDC website here in the United States and then the World Health Organization website as well. So as of March 5th, the World Health Organization reported, so this is yesterday, that there were 95,000 reported cases of COVID-19 globally and 3,281 deaths. But I do believe, as of today, globally, we've passed 100,000 cases, confirmed cases now, reported cases. And then outside, okay, so in the past 24 hours, China reported 143 cases. Most cases continue to be reported from the Hubei province, and eight provinces have not reported any cases in the last 14 days. Outside China, 2,055 cases were reported in 33 countries, and this is all from yesterday, March 5th. Around 80% of those cases continue to come from just three countries. Okay, the CDC website on the severity of the coronavirus, this is posted today, March 6th, said that reported illnesses have ranged from mild to severe, including illness resulting in death. While information so far suggests that most COVID-19 illness is mild, out of China suggests serious illness occurs in 16% of the cases. And again, this is all developing information, but they're trying, you know, okay, I'll come back to that in a minute. Older people and people with certain underlying health conditions like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, for example, seem to be at greater risk of serious illness. So that's just a couple updates from CDC and the World Health Organization. Many of you have been seeing all of this information over the news. And now here are updates on races, okay? So we are runners on this channel, we love running. And I'll give my opinions on the coronavirus and racing here in a second, but I want to run through an update on races as of March 6th, 2020. The Rome Marathon has been canceled. The Paris Marathon has been postponed to October. The World Half Marathon Championships in Poland was just announced today for being postponed to October, okay? And now I also read though that the Brighton Marathon in the United Kingdom on April 19th has posted this on their website. We are extremely sorry to hear about the recent postponement of Paris Marathon and cancellation of Rome due to the coronavirus. We would like to offer UK-based registrants in either event a potential alternative at the Brighton Marathon 2020. I don't know what that means. I actually just learned that the Brighton Marathon is the second largest in the UK and the eighth largest in Europe. I didn't realize that. So I'm hoping as far as UK-based registrants that you could pretend if you were impacted by Rome or Paris, you could get into the Brighton Marathon. Okay, moving on to the Hamburg Marathon. My Marathon, we are currently receiving inquiries about the coronavirus, which is also spreading in Germany. We are assuming that we will be able to organize the event without any significant restrictions and have not received any signals to the contrary from urban authorities. And they say that the Hamburg Marathon is happening as of today, March 6th. And they're going to increase hygiene in a big, big way around the event, okay? Now, for my thoughts on the coronavirus and spring marathons 2020 and then the Tokyo Olympics this summer over in Japan, I'm trying to keep everything in perspective. And this is all fresh and new, okay? It's happening day by day. I'm an optimistic person. You all know that, like I look on the bright side as often as I can. And part of my perspective is keeping in mind that the flu is a global situation that happens every year where, sadly, tens of thousands of people die here in the United States from the flu, okay? And even, you know, millions of cases of the flu happen every year in the United States, even with the shots that you can go get in the fall. So the flu season in the United States is, you know, November to March, typically, not to, you know, it's not exclusively. And so I'm just trying to stay calm and keep in perspective this whole global situation. But I get it because with the coronavirus, we don't have the vaccine. You know, hopefully as a global world, like working together, like the Olympics, it brings the world together. I hope the governments are working well together to help come up with a vaccine to take care of the coronavirus. And it's, that's as much as I can say on it. Like, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a medical expert. But I can do, we can just hope that we're coming together to solve this challenge. Now, I do believe the Humberg Marathon is on. I actually do, my gut is telling me, like, Germany, I looked it up. It has 82 million people in Germany. Even if Germany had 100,000 cases just in Germany, I would still feel personally comfortable with going to Germany. I actually, I honestly would. I just think that the scope of this situation is needs to be kept in perspective. The scary thing that people, well, the scary thing is that the media won't stop talking about it. I guess now I'm talking about it. So maybe I'm part of the problem too. But the scary thing is that, yes, we don't have a vaccine yet. But I do believe in science. I believe that we have a lot of smart people out there and they're working on it right now. And I do believe we're going to come up with a solution. It might not happen this year. It might be 2021. But I think together, I think we're, I think there's going to be a solution to this challenge. Okay. So I think Humberg is on. I even think London is on. I honestly do. And then as far as the Tokyo Olympics, one of my gut, what my guts telling me is that it will happen in 2020. It might be postponed. The Olympics might be postponed to September or October, but or sorry, October or November. But if as far as people coming to the Olympics to spectate or to participate as an athlete, I think screening will be very, very restricted. You will have to really prove that you are healthy and that you are not a carrier of the coronavirus or COVID-19. So that's what my gut is telling me. And I want to hear what your gut is telling you. Question of the day. What do you think about the coronavirus and specifically racing in 2020 with the Olympics with maybe your personal races? Maybe it's maybe you're getting ready for a 10 K trail race with a hundred racers. But like, are you concerned at all or maybe you're getting ready for the London marathon? Whatever you're getting ready for, what are your overall thoughts around the coronavirus and COVID-19? I know I could go on and on about this topic. I'm going to cut it off there because it's such a big topic. And I know I left out so many details about the scientific side and testing and yeah, I'm just going to leave it there. So okay, I'm off to my run. Let's do this. Then relaxing on a Friday afternoon. All right, here we go. I made just an idea. Yeah. Just an idea. Oh yeah. We're just playing the backyard. You need Michael. Good run everybody. Good solid run. There it is on the screen. Oh yeah. Now just getting some, getting some hydration mix in me. Some electrolytes from Cure. There it is. There it is. He's trying to get in the snack drawer. Okay, we're treating to the nursery. It's a little chaotic out there. So we're going to do our recovery in here right now. Just dig it in. Just dig it in. So as you can tell, I'm not overly concerned at this point about my marathon. And but I'm also not afraid to have a backup plan, a plan B. Okay. So I believe there's actually another marathon in Germany the same weekend as the Hamburg marathon. Or maybe it's in Belgium. But I'm just going to say I'm open like April 18th, 19th or the following weekend. If anyone has any ideas for a marathon in the United States or in Europe. Let me know. Like anyway, I'm just, I'm open to a plan B as we all work through this together. Because actually just like 10 minutes ago, I checked the Facebook group once again. And I forget the gentleman's name, but he posted another announcement of a marathon. I think it was in Israel that was just canceled. I believe it was Israel. So anyway, we just got to be on our toes on our A game have backup plans. And but at the same time, not worry too, too much. Okay. At the end of the day, it's like we wash our hands. We don't touch our face. We try and you know, stay away from people that are sick. And you know, that's, that's just not all we can do at this point and not, not get too over anxious in my humble opinion. All right, everyone. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. As always, we're going to toss it back up course to the Atlanta Olympic marathon trials. The last race that I was at, I wasn't racing, but I was filming. And it was an amazing time. And I hope many of you have been able to see it already. I think you have. So there it is again, in case you haven't. All right. See beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.