Coronavirus Can’t Stop America’s Largest Construction Conference

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