Jan 18, 2021
As part of a national memorial to remember and honor those Americans who have died of COVID-19, the Oregon Convention Center will be lighted in red, white, and blue Tuesday, January 19.
Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson requested the lighting as part of President-elect Joe Biden’s effort to recognize the roughly 400,000 Americans who have now died of COVID. The number of dead will soon surpass the number of Americans killed in all of World War II, making the COVID-19 epidemic the third most deadly tragedy in American history, after the 1918 Influenza outbreak and the U.S. Civil War.
The coronaviruspandemic delivered a lingering, and possibly permanent, hit to business travel that is likely to weigh on employment and economic growth in some communities for years.
Beyond the blows to airlines, hotels, travel agents and rental-car companies, the drop in business travel is rippling through whole ecosystems of related commerce, including airport shops, downtown bars and restaurants, construction companies building convention stages, entertainers, taxi drivers and aircraft-parts manufacturers.
Domestic and international business travelers in the U.S. directly spent $334.2 billion in 2019, supporting 2.5 million jobs, according to the U.S. Travel Association. But when considering the follow-on effects, it estimates the economic output and jobs supported by business travel were roughly double those figures before the pandemic.