Live data from Hacker News

Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

harvardpublichealthreview.org

81–90 of 213 posts

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#81
post #53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I don't agree with you... I do. But, being brazilian, the idea of walking around at any time with my iphone out makes me cringe. I love my country, and I think everyone should visit it, but just keep away your iphones and anything of value while walking about, and you'll be fine!

Yeah, I lived in BH - I have blonde hair, so I didn't need an iPhone to say I was a rich gringo.

My entire family has blonde hair and they are from Brazil. They're from Florianopolis though.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#82

Ever since the news of Zika causing microcephaly came up I have been wondering whether it's a net benefit to humanity/homeostasis if we were to exterminate Aedis Aegypti. Can Zika spread among humans already? It would seem like a huge risk to the future of humanity if this infectious disease interferes with reproduction. What's the worst-case scenario for letting Aedis Aegypti live? Is it better than the worst-case s…

I think the concern would be dominated by the side-effects of the method we use to perform the total extermination, rather than the side-effects of Aedis Aegypti being extinct.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#83

This article is idiotic if the main reason for cancelling the game is actually some "global spread" of Zika. Rio is not some city in the middle of nowhere from which no flights are coming in and out of, and now suddenly this massive international influx of visitors will come in -- it is a world-class city, a financial hub of the largest country in the continent. If we take London 2012 as a benchmark, estimates there…

Good point. I agreed with the author until I looked up Brazil's tourism. 5.6 Million people per year in 2015 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Brazil ).

The bulk of the tourism to Brazil is either from Central & South America, which already has the virulent strain of Zika, or it's from Europe and northern North America, which does not have the Aedes Aegypta mosquita.

Olympics tourism will be much more widespread, including many from vulnerable areas in Africa and Asia.

And the OP does not say that it will prevent the spread of Zika, only slow it. Even a few extra months could be valuable -- lots of effort is currently being spent looking for a vaccine.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#84
post #76
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is pretty bad. One, it looks like the same kids over and over so the cops clearly do not care. Two, I was wondering what the gun laws were there until some guy chased them with a hand gun. If someone is looking to go have some fun fighting it seems like walking around with a cardboard iPhone might be the ticket. I'm only sort of kidding. I know if some kid grabbed my wife while we were walking down the str…

My colleague had his phone stolen as he was talking on it by two guys on a moped - that was in Bond Street, London.

I did not mean to imply it could not happen anywhere. Only that this was exceptionally bad, and Rome was the only other place I had seen with the swarms of kids blatantly stealing.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#85
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's an objective unit of measurement. You can't objectively measure (or assign a value to) human suffering.

Except that we do. We assign monetary values to human lives in actuarial models every day. The statistical value of a human live in the Netherlands when considering traffic safety was E700k in the last project I worked on, but this varies by purpose and over time. Furthermore, there are several international standard methods of quantifying the burden of disease, like the DALY and QALY. So yes, we can and we do 'objec…

Yes, by using a model. The assumptions of the model are subjective in the sense of making judgments about what's important. For example, they don't take into account catastrophic collapse of the environment (overfishing, species extinction, ecological collapse eg from bees dying out, acidification of oceans from CO2 release). They also make assumptions about people's utility functions -- the famous example by Bill Gates that baldness has much more more research being done on it than malaria relative to the suffering, because people with more money speak with a larger economic voice and skew the results.

In your model, given certain starting conditions, can you ever get a positive value for human suffering? For example if rich people are willing to pay to see gladiators fight animals to the death, or just to see the poor people subjugated as slaves. I am pretty sure you assign positive financial value to animal suffering because factory farms torture animals to save a buck and therefore in purely economic terms they are doing "better".

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#86
post #74

This article is idiotic if the main reason for cancelling the game is actually some "global spread" of Zika. Rio is not some city in the middle of nowhere from which no flights are coming in and out of, and now suddenly this massive international influx of visitors will come in -- it is a world-class city, a financial hub of the largest country in the continent. If we take London 2012 as a benchmark, estimates there…

Yes, Rio sees many visitors regularly. What Rio does not see is an influx of visitors from nearly every country on earth. It's that spread that is the problem. The financial impact on hosting the games is already negative for host cities. That's no longer debatable without ignoring fact. Your argument that all the experts studying the Zika epidemic and drawing the ever more cemented conclusion that this is a very ser…

But will you at least concede that THIS is what should have been the focus of the article? While perfectly valid, all of the scientific discussion around Zika is mostly irrelevant to the point the author was trying to make -- the true variable of interest is how the games shape the quantity of visitors and the distribution of those visitors around the world. But there's hardly a line in the article about that -- just the 500,000 number is thrown around with absolutely no citation.

Instead,the article does some of the worst things we'd expect from scientists with sentences like "All it takes is one infected traveler" -- this is fear-mongering and irresponsible and the author should be ashamed of that comment.

I maintain that it is not a careful, reasoned argument about the issue.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#87
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London has the most tourists of any city in the world. No, it's not the same.

I looked up the actual figures after posting -- seems London has about 5x as many international visitors, so you are absolutely right. But, I think in Rio there is also an argument to be made of how many of those "estimated" visitors are actually simply displacing people who would otherwise have travelled to Rio. To your point, if Rio is in fact no set-up to accommodate as many people as London, then a lot of the eff…

Most people are probably going to stay at Air BnBs. There literally aren't enough hotels there to support the influx of people there. It was a mess during the world cup and that was held throughout the entire country. The only place I could find to stay during the world cup there was an overpriced AirBnb.

It was totally worth it, but I've been wondering since how the hell the city is going to handle that many people there at once.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#88
post #62
post #3

I was wondering about whether this would happen. I am not enough of an expert to make a call on this either way of course, but if experts decided this was the right call would it even be possible to cancel/reschedule the Olympics? Imagine the financial impact on Rio.

It's pretty well known and well documented at this point that the host cities for olympic games see no financial benefit at all, and in fact they lose money. Most recently, look at the Sochi games, which cost $50+bn. There is a 0% chance that the games brought in that much money. The entities making money are the IOC and the broadcast companies, NBC being the primary. It would be sad if the games were cancelled, but…

Agreed that the Olympic games do not have financially benefit the host city. But, Rio has probably already spent a lot of money on the games. Not hosting them would probably hurt, financially, even more.

Please note I am not arguing that the Olympics should continue in Rio. We should do what is best for world health, even if that negatively impacts Rio financially.

Re: Concerns for global spread of Zika mean Rio de Janeiro Olympics must not proceed

#89

Ever since the news of Zika causing microcephaly came up I have been wondering whether it's a net benefit to humanity/homeostasis if we were to exterminate Aedis Aegypti. Can Zika spread among humans already? It would seem like a huge risk to the future of humanity if this infectious disease interferes with reproduction. What's the worst-case scenario for letting Aedis Aegypti live? Is it better than the worst-case s…

article suggesting that, and lots of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536074
Post reply on HN