The coronavirus cancellations have started. So where does New Orleans go from here?

Citing a need to be proactive in the face of confirmed local coronavirus cases, Mayor LaToya Cantrell shut down some, but not all, public events through the weekend. The casualties included St. Patrick’s Day parades, the Mardi Gras Indians’ “Super Sunday” gathering, a second-line parade and the weekly Wednesday at the Square concert downtown at Lafayette Square.

All are free, outdoor events mostly attended by locals.

Organizers and participants may disagree, but in the grand scheme of New Orleans’ cultural economy, they were relatively low-impact and could be canceled with little political or economic cost.

That math will soon change.

Around 17,000 paying customers per day are expected for the Buku Music + Art Project on the grounds of Mardi Gras World on March 20-21.

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Buku boasts a seven-figure budget and a roster of mostly national hip-hop and electronic dance music acts. It attracts fans from around the country and is produced by a subsidiary of AEG, the same global entertainment powerhouse that co-produces the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Canceling Buku would be drastic. Canceling Jazz Fest and the French Quarter Festival next month would be unprecedented.

Over three consecutive weekends in late April and early May, those two festivals would normally draw hundreds of thousands of attendees from all over the world. A study by Scott Ray and Associates, which has conducted market studies and economic impact analyses of numerous festivals and events, pegged Jazz Fest's economic impact alone at more than $300 million.

In the coming days, as coronavirus testing ramps up, the number of confirmed local cases will continue to rise.

So what will Cantrell do?

If she follows the same blueprint as this week, she would be obliged to call off Buku. And that wouldn’t bode well for either French Quarter Fest or Jazz Fest.

In interviews and in a Facebook post this week, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, who oversees Louisiana’s lucrative tourism industry, opined that the modest number of cases of coronavirus in the state so far is not enough of a public health menace to pull the plug on festivals at this time.

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Such a cost/benefit analysis is tricky. Broadly speaking, humans accept some risk in order to function as a society. We know that around 18,000 people will die in this country every year from the flu. The World Health Organization puts the number of annual flu deaths worldwide at 650,000.

That’s a whole lot of death. And yet we don’t shut down mass gatherings during flu season.

Coronavirus is new and different; the response to it has crossed over to panic mode in some quarters. Given all the attention, you'd think coronavirus has a far more effective publicist than the flu – or is in fact a greater threat, as many health experts fear.

Prudent personal practices – vigorous hand-washing, not touching your face, staying home when you’re sick, covering sneezes and coughs with your elbow, disinfecting shared surfaces – are certainly warranted.

And the demographic groups most susceptible to coronavirus, including the elderly and people with other health conditions, should clearly take additional precautions. Avoiding large public gatherings is one.

But is there a rational middle ground between canceling nothing and canceling everything in the face of a virus threat?

Is there a point at which the economic and psychological damage of shutting everything down outweighs the public health benefits?

And, especially relative to Jazz Fest, how far into the future should cancellations extend?

That debate is playing out behind the scenes right now, as the fate of the upcoming festival season hangs in the balance. City officials will reportedly confer with festival organizers later this week.

Going forward, can selective shut-downs be justified?

On Wednesday, the NBA suspended league play indefinitely. Will all concerts in arenas also be called off? Is thousands of people seated elbow-to-elbow in an arena more conducive to the spread of an illness than people standing outside at a parade or festival?

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If “social distancing” is so important, can Cantrell allow Bourbon Street to be jam-packed every night? Will she institute a curfew?

As more and more events across the country are canceled or postponed – the South By Southwest festival in Austin, the huge Coachella and Stagecoach festivals in southern California, spring tours by Pearl Jam and the Zac Brown Band, etc. – the effect snowballs. This kind of "cancel culture" is contagious.

The economic and political costs of pulling the plug on Buku, French Quarter Fest and Jazz Fest would be staggering. Lots of pain will be felt up and down the economic ladder, from hotels and restaurants to musicians, vendors and suppliers. Thousands of people with flight and lodging reservations will need to change their plans.

But the costs of an overwhelmed health care system would also be heavy. And tragic.

Either way, the disruption could approach that of Hurricane Katrina, minus the actual physical damage.

When this is all over – and at some point it will be – plenty of discussion will ensue about whether the panic ultimately did more damage than the pandemic.

Hopefully, that's the discussion we'll have – and not the opposite.

This column has been updated. After it was first published, the 2020 Buku festival was postponed until Labor Day weekend.