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MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

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11–20 of 195 posts

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#11

This is a very sad news for the city of Barcelona and for everyone involved in organizing or exhibiting. But that was the right choice. I'm wondering what's next to be cancelled.

F1 Chinese GP was announced as being canceled/rescheduled today. Interesting that they're canceling events that are scheduled that far out, it wasnt supposed to happen until April 19th.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#12
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000.

Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death.

CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#13
While I feel sorry for the people that put the energy to make this happen and also for the people that may lose their jobs this month over this, as a native inhabitant of Barcelona, I can only celebrate the news, even if it is for this terrible reason.

When MWC is ocurring in Barcelona, public transport (subway) goes on strike (because of the maximum impact). But usually this only fucks over non MWC attending people, because tickets are so expensive that only people which can use a taxi anyway will go, greatly diminishing the impact of the strike for attendants while making inhabitants lives miserable for that time period.

Also, Barcelona already has a very severe problem of houses being rented out to tourists with very high markups, producing a gentrification of the city (along with other factors, not only the tourism is responsible for this). Events like MWC do not help this situation.

BCN is already overloaded with tourism, events like MWC only make it worse for those of us that live there.

I'm completely aware that this is not the responsibility of MWC organization or tourists, this is a regulation problem. But since regulation is stacked against us, I can only get happier that this year we won't have to suffer all the inconvenience of the event while reaping almost none of the benefit.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#14
post #12
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death. CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

If this virus infects 60% of the world's population, and has a death rate of 1%, that's 50 million deaths.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#15
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

I think people are worried about the unknown unknowns. IIUC, it's infectious for a considerable period of time (one or two weeks) before the infected person becomes systematic. Plus, it's possible that some infectious persons never develop symptoms. Also, the case count is still in exponential growth mode. Plus, information coming out of China might be incomplete.

No idea whether the conference should be cancelled, but it's not an irrational idea. There could be a large number of silent cases outside of China already.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#16
post #12
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death. CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

They're worth effort, but the answer is that the parameters area reasonably well known. Suicide isn't increasing exponentially, for example.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#17
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

MWC got caught in a tough spot. Lots of companies were pulling out. Companies don't like sending employees to events when, rationally or not, a lot of families are going to be uncomfortable about a family member traveling to a big show with a large number of Chinese attendees. And, of course, a lot of employees also believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can't just say "nope" without consequence.

Many years ago, I remember my company canceling some sales event because of, I think, Gulf War I because they didn't want to tell European employees in particular to travel to the US often on American carriers.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#18
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

There’s just the little problem of trustworthiness of Chinese numbers. On one hand you have this reassuring data that dynamic of the virus is slowing down, on the other there are serious people with good credentials going on record saying this might get a lot worse before it gets better. 2% CFR on 60% of world’s population is not a negligible number.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#19
post #12
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death. CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Terrorism kills 2 people per year in the U.S. and we spend 100s of billions. The difference is large companies make more money building weapons than large companies make treating the flue (or mental health).

Edit: The point is, it's all about money. There's no rational reason to spend so much on terrorism and so little on mental health, yet we do.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#20
post #12
post #9

It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view. China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (inclu…

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death. CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Suicide is a big problem, buy it's scary in a different way. I'm not personally worried about a suicide epidemic, or catching suicide from someone.
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