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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

#71

Post by puranjay »

labster wrote: post #53
thwer234324 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Our widespread abuse of antibiotics isn't helping. To think that we can go 100 years without a serious pandemic while also abusing antibiotics at an unprecedented scale betrays a sheer disregard for biology and nature.

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

#72

Post by DrJaws »

ImaCake wrote: post #66
DrJaws wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I completely agree, that's why I said I don't like to use arguments of authority, but two of them are not educated in harvard, they are heads of departments and directors from harvard and john hopkins

People educated in those fields with enough renown to claim those positions with a lot to lose for just writing that.

And yes, while they can end being just wrong or spreading fearmongering information, they are the most trusted sources I found

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

#73

Post by tenpies »

pengaru wrote: post #40
jamie_ca wrote: post #25

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…

> 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 are in the middle of summer. And Wuhan and Beijing is still cold which is why there’s high infection rates.

Wouldn't Singapore already have shown this by now? They've had to devote considerable effort towards management and it's basically summer year-round there and it's quite humid..

Winter also means people wear gloves, touch their face less, and don't sweat as much.

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

#75

Post by puranjay »

Alex3917 wrote: post #49
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…

> 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 also have to keep in mind that that 2% rate is in a fairly developed country with robust medical infrastructure and a decently young population.

You can't expect the same death rate in a country with poor medical infrastructure (say, Afghanistan) or an old and vulnerable population (say, Japan)

If this thing truly hits the predicted scale, even good medical infrastructure won't help if it is stretched too thin.

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

#76

Post by kylemh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #51
01100011 wrote: post #42

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…

At a nearly 2% mortality rate even for younger people, I think the odds are high enough to be worried. It's obviously not as deadly as the bubonic plague, but this disease is very infectious...

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

#77

Post by Fomite »

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 am an epidemiologist, and Marc Lipsitch knows his business.

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

#78

Post by rimliu »

puranjay wrote: post #71
labster wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Our widespread abuse of antibiotics isn't helping. To think that we can go 100 years without a serious pandemic while also abusing antibiotics at an unprecedented scale betrays a sheer disregard for biology and nature.

This is a virus. Antibiotics are for bacterial diseases

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

#80

Post by yitianjian »

kylemh wrote: post #76
Barrin92 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

At a nearly 2% mortality rate even for younger people, I think the odds are high enough to be worried. It's obviously not as deadly as the bubonic plague, but this disease is very infectious...

It's not 2% for younger, it's like <0.5% for less than 40, and something like 10% for older than 70.
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