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Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

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Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#51

I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while. There is nearly zero reason for me to show up at work. I can do nearly everything from home, often better. At work, I'm in a large, open building surrounded by thousands of people. Am I overreacting? I know there's a good chance we're all going to get COVID-19, but if I can delay it a bit, I lessen the hit…

>I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while.

Am in the UK and not the US but given that I'm healthy and relatively young I don't really see the point. This disease is scary in the aggregate, i.e it imposes huge economic costs. The average case of it is basically having flu symptoms, and I never stayed at home unless I got sick during bad flu seasons.

I'm not really sure why people paint being infected with this like the bubonic plague or something, there is already a bunch of corona viruses raging around all the time anyway.

edit: lots of downvotes because I don't lock myself in because of a corona virus? People here seem to love hysteria a these days.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#52

This may seem silly but this is one of my first confirmations about how serious this is.

Given how Japan handled the Diamond Princess situation, it's a foregone conclusion they are not equipped to handle it, so more than likely the Olympics will be cancelled. They just can't risk it. Athletes/Peoples safety can't be risked, the "Olympic" brand cant be risked.

Japanese Gov’t seems yet to decide whether to go cannonball or call it off entirely, currently bit on cannonball side which is how this deadline story came up.

If cancelled, this’ll be the second time an Olympic Games in Tokyo is cancelled, that I personally find hilarious, but a lot will be fuming embarrassed, especially if historians later likely is to mark it an uneducated overreaction.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#53

This may seem silly but this is one of my first confirmations about how serious this is.

Is this a good time to flag HNs self-conceited hive-mind ? Two days ago, HN was full of - 'LOL this is some Alex Jones level conspiracy'. Warnings by Harvard epidemiologists ? No. Virologists ? No. China quarantining half the population ? No. Only the tech 'wizards' from SV, have a monopoly on truth don't you know. The Orwellian censorship that has been unleashed by these idiots will do the world much more harm in th…

Meh, I’ve been warning people about the coronavirus for a couple weeks now. And our prepper contingent has been on it for years. The silver lining is by this time next year, we should have ~20% less throwaway accounts being created for comments like these.

Many years back I read The Coming Plague about epidemiology and the disease cowboys who fight it. There is always a coming plague, known or novel. It was only a matter of time before we got a repeat of the Spanish Flu, or the Black Death. If not this time, then someday. Thinking otherwise is folly.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#54
post #35

It will be cancelled. Mathematic models made by epidemiologist experts from Harvard and prediction from John Hopkins guys are giving huge numbers between 40 and 70% world adult population will be infected in one year and numbers of deaths will be between 30 and 150 million if their predictions are correct and china didn't lie with the 2% death rate Read the threads from their twitters, the situation is much much wors…

That's absolutely nonsensical paranoia. It's the equivalent of making $1000 month one of your startup, $2000 month two, and immediately claiming that by month 24 you will be making over $16 billion.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 is likely to become an annual community disease. But it's not going to kill 30 million people until like 2120.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#55
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were able to essentially starve SARS out of new people to infect. It had a 2-7 day incubation period, was not contagious before symptomatic, and spread by bodily fluid (coughing up water droplets, spread by touch to another). COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period, is contagious before you're symptomatic, and is possibly airborne (I haven't heard strong confirmation of that yet, but it's definitely more virulent…

And apparently it can survive on a stainless steel surface for 36 hours. [0] Also from [0] however: "Sunlight will cut the virus ability to grow in half so the half-life will be 2.5 minutes and in the dark it’s about 13m to 20m. Sunlight is really good at killing viruses. That’s why I believe that Australia and the southern hemisphere will not see any great infections rates because they have lots of sunlight and they…

The thing to watch is the southern hemisphere.

There are very few cases right now in South America or Australia -- and so far I can't find any evidence of person-to-person transmission on either continent.

If the outbreak continues to fail to take hold there for even just a couple more weeks, then it seems likely that the northern-hemisphere outbreak will die down when the season ends.

Other coronaviruses and most human respiratory viruses generally exhibit very strong seasonality. It seems likely that this virus will too. But, again, watch the southern hemisphere.

Of course, the flu is seasonal -- and returns every year. Even if this does burn out in late spring, it may be back next year.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#56
post #35

It will be cancelled. Mathematic models made by epidemiologist experts from Harvard and prediction from John Hopkins guys are giving huge numbers between 40 and 70% world adult population will be infected in one year and numbers of deaths will be between 30 and 150 million if their predictions are correct and china didn't lie with the 2% death rate Read the threads from their twitters, the situation is much much wors…

> china didn't lie with the 2% death rate Keep in mind that 2% is just a guess, of people officially diagnosed the death rate is supposedly 4.8%: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/f9134d/48_fatality...

We need to take into account also the asymptomatic people that will never report the disease

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#58
post #35

It will be cancelled. Mathematic models made by epidemiologist experts from Harvard and prediction from John Hopkins guys are giving huge numbers between 40 and 70% world adult population will be infected in one year and numbers of deaths will be between 30 and 150 million if their predictions are correct and china didn't lie with the 2% death rate Read the threads from their twitters, the situation is much much wors…

That's absolutely nonsensical paranoia. It's the equivalent of making $1000 month one of your startup, $2000 month two, and immediately claiming that by month 24 you will be making over $16 billion. Make no mistake, COVID-19 is likely to become an annual community disease. But it's not going to kill 30 million people until like 2120.

I'm not an epidemiologist, and while I do not like to use argument from authority, I trust this guys because is their work, they do it in top institutions and they won't jeopardize their reputation for some fear-mongering tweets.

They can be wrong, but they are not going to lie.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#59
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were able to essentially starve SARS out of new people to infect. It had a 2-7 day incubation period, was not contagious before symptomatic, and spread by bodily fluid (coughing up water droplets, spread by touch to another). COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period, is contagious before you're symptomatic, and is possibly airborne (I haven't heard strong confirmation of that yet, but it's definitely more virulent…

And apparently it can survive on a stainless steel surface for 36 hours. [0] Also from [0] however: "Sunlight will cut the virus ability to grow in half so the half-life will be 2.5 minutes and in the dark it’s about 13m to 20m. Sunlight is really good at killing viruses. That’s why I believe that Australia and the southern hemisphere will not see any great infections rates because they have lots of sunlight and they…

If it's inactivated at only 30 degrees (86F), that suggests an unconventional combat strategy of just heating buildings to that temperature—that's basically a hot summer day. We're not talking an autoclave here.

Re: Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

#60
80 years ago, in 1940, Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics for the first time, but it was canceled due to the outbreak of WWII and Japan had invaded China.

80 years after, in 2020, Tokyo Summer Olympics could be canceled due to outbreak of coronavirus from China.

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