By Juan Montoya
Remember in the movie Jaws when Roy Scheider (Martin Brody) and Richard Dreyfuss (Matt Hopper) tried to convince Murray Hamilton (Mayor Larry Vaughn) and the Chamber of Commerce hacks to stop the Independence Day celebration and close the Amity beach because of the presence of a great white shark to no avail?
Mayor Vaughn overrules them, fearing that the loss of tourist revenue will cripple the town.
The result was a disaster and resulted in the gruesome deaths of several townspeople.
The plot, albeit the evil is a bit different, is similar to the decision by the City of South Padre Island officials deciding that Spring Break 2020 will go on despite the wave of cancellations of major events throughout Texas and the nation due to fears of the spread of the coronavirus.
Southwest by Southwest concert in Austin has been cancelled. So have the professional basketball games by the National Basketball League. Major League Baseball spring training has also closed. The Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show, Disneyland, NCAA March Madness, the Calle Ocho Festival in Miami is also cerrado. All the St. Patrick's Day parades, including the one Dallas, have been nixed, as has Broadway, among other mass events.
In fact, entire countries, like Italy and South Korea, are closed and mass gatherings are prohibited. President Trump has banned all flights from Europe from coming to the United States, even though there have already been more than 1,500 people infected in the US and and 39 people have died.
Nonetheless, South Padre Island city officials insist that it's safe to go in the water.
If you look at the map above, it's plain to see that many of the Spring Breakers come from those states where coronavirus cases have occurred. And once Texas Week gets here, the kids from Houston and San Antonio will descend upon the island in droves. So far, Texas had 34 reported cases.
So far, the nearest cases of the virus have been in Houston to the north and Monterrey, N.L., Mexico to the south. And Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio was chosen to quarantine travelers coming from impacted countries.
Still, SPI issued statement March 10 claiming that city officials have "diligently" reviewed and evaluated" all information associated with the coronavirus COVID-19 and decided that the threat of the virus spreading was a "minimal risk."
"Information available indicates that the majority of the coronavirus cases are from people that entered in the U.S. internationally...and have been appropriately quarantined," they stated.
What "information" do the SPI Chamber of Commerce Sunshine Boys have that the rest of us don't?
Can you hear the "ta ra ra ra ra rs ra ra" Jaws melody in the air?