Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 195 posts

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#41

Post by wolco »

merqurio wrote: 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…

The death rate has been climbing, today it's 2.5%. Which is a sign that either the reported cases is much lower than the official count or the virus is getting deadlier. From the data we have from other countries it looks like the death rate is stable/low which points to a huge amount of unreported cases.

What is the death rate for the 360 person flu group?

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#42

Post by downerending »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #19
inglor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not going to claim that that money is all well-spent, but terrorism (and security in general) is a rather different problem. A single failure can cost thousands of lives, and huge knock-on effects, as we've sadly seen.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#43

Post by berkeleyjunk »

ghaff wrote: post #33
electriclove wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the harm caused by MWC being cancelled?

A lot of money is wasted. Presumably sales at a lot of companies take some incremental hit. Some startup that planned this as their launch event is screwed. A lot of people in Barcelona don't make money they were expecting to make. (Other Barcelona residents breathe a sigh of relief.) So, yes, there's harm even if the decision was probably the rational one.

I work at a startup where we invested quite a bit of time and money for this show. It is a big hit for the smaller companies since it eats away a large chunk of your marketing budget.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#44

Post by lawlorino »

downerending wrote: post #16
inglor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly this. The expected annual deaths from suicide are normally distributed whereas a highly contagious disease is long-tailed, i.e. a non-negligible probability of a huge number of fatalities.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#45

Post by erentz »

merqurio wrote: 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…

> The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1]

We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate.

If you had to choose between being infected with the flu or COVID19 you’d chose the flu because you’re about 20 times more likely to die from COVID19 based on the data available at the moment.

If COVID19 has spread globally and becomes established then it will be similar in terms of deaths to the Spanish Flu. Nobody wants that and it is perfectly reasonable for people to be concerned about wanting to prevent that from happening.

If this does spread into a pandemic then you will be able to rightly come back in 24 months and compare the annual total deaths from COVID19 to the seasonal flu. Until then it’s an entirely incorrect comparison.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#46

Post by berkeleyjunk »

merqurio wrote: post #23
downerending wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

The MWC was going to be attended by 100,000 people, 75% of them from Europe and the US, 10% from Asia-Pacific (excluding China) and 9% from the rest of the world. Only 6% of visitors were going to be from China, and less were expected much less due to the COVD-19. Can any of them come infected by the COVD-19? The probability is very low. Almost all of the participants will come from areas where the presence of the CO…

I think once the first high profile cancellations (LG, Ericsson) came in it was just a matter of time. We were prepared to go still but one by one everyone we were supposed to meet started canceling. The domino effect of the first cancellations doomed the event.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#47

Post by KallDrexx »

Aperocky wrote: post #36
downerending wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

You’re right, except cases are not in exponential growth for a period of time already if you’ve been following closely. Right now it’s more or less linear

Just keep in mind that it's been admitted that China is strapped for testing kits and turning people away without testing them. So it's possible that it only turned linear because the number of testing kits available per day is linear.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#49

Post by anonuser123456 »

inglor wrote: post #12
merqurio wrote: 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

The flu infects 30,000,000/year and kills 10,000.

Given r0, the Covid-2019 would infect 60,000,000 and kill 1,000,000 if unchecked in the US.

Re: MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns

#50

Post by lawlorino »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #19
inglor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree, as I posted elsewhere in this thread these annual death rates are drawn from different distributions. The annual suicide rate is normally distributed, in other words the expected number of deaths will be around the same number each year. Terrorism and pandemics are long-tailed meaning a non-negligible probability that the rate shoots up to something much higher than your quoted two per year.
Post reply on HN