What if the show must go on?

The longest line at ConExpo, the largest construction convention in North America, is the line to grab beer.

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As the bottles of Budweiser and Bud Light fly over the counter, the cashier at the beer station says she needs to run to the bathroom. “I’m getting a little terrified,” she says. “I didn’t see any hand sanitizer the whole time I was handing out beers.”

The beer seller, like the vast majority of attendees at the conference, which takes up 2.7 million square feet of space, was concerned about the transmission of coronavirus as about 130,000 attendees converged on Las Vegas on March 10 for this once-every-three-years event. But for her—and planners of many trade shows and events that are going forward despite the pandemic—the show must go on.

Even as college campuses are shifting classes online, sports teams are competing before empty arenas, and governments from Italy to Washington state are restricting mass gatherings, many American industries—including construction—are trying to go about business as usual. In the case of the huge ConExpo show, plans were just too far along when virus fears began to take hold in the U.S.

Moreover, given the three-year gap between confabs, this joint exhibition of construction and mining equipment couldn’t be easily postponed. So clients, potential new customers, and dealers for everything from backhoes and cement mixers to cranes and road-pavement gear trekked to Vegas to do deals and get a pulse on the market amid an unprecedented public-health crisis.

Why would anyone go to a trade show with 130,000 attendees during a burgeoning pandemic?