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

axios.com

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

#81

Post by jakeinspace »

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…

Seems worse than the average flu. Not likely that you'll die from it if you're young and not immunocompromised, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there won't be long term health effects. And if you have anyone over age 70 or under age 2 who you care at all about, their lives could be at risk.

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

#82

Post by xbmcuser »

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.…

I think many people here on hackernews are being stupid that they are healthy adults so they don't need to worry. Even if you don't die you will be out of the work force for 2-3 weeks either because you are sick or quarantined. You could pass the infection to your children, parents Grand parents who might not be able to fight off the infection and die. Many people get flu vaccines or over the years have built up some immunity. This virus is new so no one has any immunity most people will get infected only some might die but the many that get sick will be out of the work force. You guys are aware of tech productions shortages but a lot of other goods like garments we wear come from China. If they are unable to start back up soon world will be facing shortages of many other items prices will start going up soon. Other countries have started hitting capacity production for garments as China is out and they still can't meet the demand.

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

#83

Post by tdhoot »

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…

> The silver lining is by this time next year, we should have ~20% less throwaway accounts being created for comments like these.

I'm trying to be charitable here...am I reading this correctly?

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

#84

Post by t-writescode »

lqs469 wrote: post #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.

Coincidence?!

Yes.

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

#85

Post by baddox »

blasphemous wrote: post #17
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #8

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.

Wouldn’t not canceling it when they should have be a better example of them not being able to handle the situation?

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

#86

Post by kyeb »

Wow, I've been reading Axios as my primary news source for years - first time I've seen it linked on HN, though!

I highly recommend it to other people here. The reporting tends to be smart and to the point, their UI/UX is smooth and modern, and their ads tend to be more subtle than similar news sites.

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

#87

Post by Fomite »

refulgentis wrote: post #65
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.

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

There's been a lot of shifts in thinking recently, including by myself, as some things that were explicable via either the typically bad data from an emerging outbreak or "just so" stories about stochasticity, like the cruise ship cases, or the bulk of the cases in South Korea being due to a single massive spreading event in a fairly insular community, turned out to be...well...more common than would be desirable.

The field, as a whole, has started talking much more about mitigation, and less about containment, because attempts to intensively trace and isolate cases are only partially holding the line.

That being said, important caveats to all of this is:

- As Marc Lipsitch notes, those estimates don't tell us how many of those cases will be asymptomatic or mild, because we don't have good numbers for that yet. The difference between "Under the weather for a few days" and "Needs respiratory support in an ICU" is obviously massive.

- Epidemic models inherently assume exponential growth (because that's how epidemics work). But that does mean that small perturbations in how we understand how the disease "works" can dramatically chance projections.

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

#88

Post by DrJaws »

Fomite wrote: post #77
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 am an epidemiologist, and Marc Lipsitch knows his business.

would you change or add anything to what I wrote from what I understood about the covid situation?

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by Scipio_Afri »

jakeinspace wrote: post #81
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…

Seems worse than the average flu. Not likely that you'll die from it if you're young and not immunocompromised, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there won't be long term health effects. And if you have anyone over age 70 or under age 2 who you care at all about, their lives could be at risk.

Seems like children under 9 are not effected much at all, not sure about under 2 tho.
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