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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

#61

Post by iliveinchina »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #8

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

Your base case scenario should be that this will be globally widespread. The tipping point was when Iran became an epicenter. This is problematic because of its porous borders with countries with weak government.

The good news is the virus is not too risky for an individual, excepting those who are old and with pre-existing conditions. The bad news is that there will likely be a lot of deaths in aggregate, globally. The other bad news is that the virus has been highly disruptive socially and economically in every country when the infection rate has started to climb.

The best we can do is calmly make preparations for how things will change.

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

#62

Post by aaron695 »

SECProto wrote: post #28
cycrutchfield wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are orders of magnitudes larger than the SARS outbreak at this point.

> We are orders of magnitudes larger than the SARS outbreak at this point an order* SARS had ~8500 cases, ~800 deaths [1]. COVID-19 is currently ~81000 cases and ~2700 deaths.[2] It will be orders, plural, at some point, but remains to be seen how big (and I won't speculate on that). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2003_Probable_cases_of_SA... [2] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

No. It's orders of magnitudes.

Look at the SARS timeline, it was > 100 times less at this point -

https://www.who.int/csr/don/2003_07_04/en/

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

#64

Post by ImaCake »

DrJaws wrote: 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…

A lot of the links you provide have alarmist titles and big claims and confusing evidence. Which is strange since the twitter authors are clearly well educated virologists/epidemiologists. But the style of language makes it difficult for me to trust what they are saying. So far I am sticking to research papers and This Week In Virology [0], where there is a lot less dramatic clickbait language and a lot more skeptical analysis of statistics. My conclusion so far is that no one knows how this will play out, but the fear seems to be more dangerous than the actual disease in many places.

0. http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

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

#65

Post by refulgentis »

akiselev wrote: post #54
DrJaws wrote: 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.

That is counter to nearly everything I've read from equally intelligent, cautious, subject matter experts over the past couple days.

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

#66

Post by ImaCake »

DrJaws wrote: post #58
akiselev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know a guy who went to work as a post-doc at Harvard. He left behind experimental samples of human blood that were unlabelled, which I had to inform his former supervisor about. He also had a number of other professional failings. The takeaway is that just because someone has "Harvard" on their resume doesn't mean they are even remotely competent.

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

#67

Post by bitreality »

akiselev wrote: post #54
DrJaws wrote: 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.

There's nothing nonsensical about it. That's a very poor analogy as well, comparing a startup's growth to the spread of a highly-infectious virus.

COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. If there was no quarantine, you could expect truly exponentially higher number of infections.

The problem with these things is, if the rate of spread is >1, then it becomes exponential. That is, if the average person infects more than one person, then the rate of spread is going to get completely out of control. Unless of course, you can impose measures that reduce the rate of spread to below 1.

With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponential.

A startup does not grow exponentially by default. Many actions need to be done correctly to continue growing. A business's default state is death.

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

#68

Post by puranjay »

iliveinchina wrote: post #61
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #8

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

Your base case scenario should be that this will be globally widespread. The tipping point was when Iran became an epicenter. This is problematic because of its porous borders with countries with weak government. The good news is the virus is not too risky for an individual, excepting those who are old and with pre-existing conditions. The bad news is that there will likely be a lot of deaths in aggregate, globally.…

The biggest impact will be on global supply chains. Also paints into sharp contrast our over reliance on China.

A side project I'm working on uses a key component from a Chinese manufacturer. Their factory has been shut indefinitely and we are 40 days behind schedule. My rep told me that while they've been working on the marketing/tech side of things from home, the factory can't open since workers are simply refusing to show up, and neither coercion or incentives seem to help.

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

#69

Post by CaptainZapp »

sk0g wrote: post #19
wyldfire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the world is gradually acknowledging its seriousness as it continues to spread. This is certainly the highest-profile event that has considered cancellation.

Events don't really get bigger than Olympics, do they? The last ones to be cancelled were due to world wars.

Actually they do.

"The World Cup is the most prestigious association football tournament in the world, as well as the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games"[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup

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

#70

Post by robjan »

oh_sigh wrote: post #63

Will the tech sector fare better than the general economy during this? After all, no physical contact is the norm there.

Depends on what real-world businesses and processes the tech are supporting. Most tech doesn't exist in isolation and involves things like manufacturing and logistics. Other tech companies are supported by ads which are funded by the aforementioned.
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