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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

#91

Post by baxtr »

rococode wrote: post #46

I've been checking for updates on the virus several times a day since it first started being reported in Western media around Jan 20 (in part because it's been a fun distraction, in part because I have friends in Wuhan). I like to think I'm generally an optimist, but I think it's been clear for several weeks now that this is going to have a significant worldwide impact. There are just too many factors in favor of unc…

Almost everything you write makes sense, but “entire families wiped out”? Do you have a source for that?

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

#92

Post by Fomite »

DrJaws wrote: post #88
Fomite wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Besides my usual request not to follow Eric Feigl-Ding as an authoritative source?

Not really? This is the currently understood state of the science. I would say though that right now several things have broken the "wrong" way in terms of optimistic projections, so it's still possible for the situation to improve.

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

#94

Post by tenpies »

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…

> Am I overreacting?

Probably not. Mortality rate aside (anywhere from 2% to 5% depending on source), the biggest issue is hospitalization rate (about 20% based on Chinese numbers). No country on the planet could handle that hospitalization rate all at once.

The priority going forward is about managing spread. Keeping spread as slow as possible so the absolute number of people who need to be hospitalized at any particular point in time is as small as possible. That makes it possible for hospitals to keep up and keep the mortality rate as low as possible. You want to have a trickle of patients coming in over a very long time, not a one-day tsunami.

The other thing is that this will absolutely result in shortages. China has already banned the export of many medical supplies and as this sort of nationalism spreads the shortages will be more tangible. New supply chains will eventually emerge for many things, but they will take a while to do so. If you need any medications, now is probably a good time to stock up with as much as reasonably possible.

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

#95

Post by lqs469 »

mc3 wrote: post #79

Time for a remote distributed Olympics!

Organizers have to take into account transportation costs and administrative costs. unless as close as possible, such as the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, but that also means no distribution.

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

#96

Post by gibolt »

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 personally am watching others around me do what I consider "overreacting". Once it starts spreading locally though, the response will be reasonable.

The biggest gain in working from home is not protecting yourself, but the spread to all of your coworkers and then to all of the next infections beyond them leading to actual deaths.

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

#97

Post by PopePompus »

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 worse than the average flu AND unlike the flu, there's no vaccine (and there probably won't be one in time to make much of a difference).

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

#98

Post by vanniv »

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…

This is a more-deadly-than-average coronavirus, or so it seems.

It is really hard to tell, because it is still very new outside of China, and you can't trust any of the data coming from there -- so we won't really know for 2 more weeks, until the first big round of cases from open countries end in either recovery or death. That said, the Chinese statistics put median time between first symptoms and death (amongst fatal cases) at only 8 days -- and the 600 cases from the cruise ship are all older than that now, with 3 deaths as of yesterday, which suggests that the 2% mortality rate being bandied about is probably not wildly wrong. (It might be 1% or 3%, but probably not 10%+ like fearmongers are saying or 34% like MERS was -- unless fatalities from the cruise ship are being suppressed or there is something special about that group, or, I guess, if the median of 8 days turns out to be wildly, wildly wrong)

Concern seems highly warranted. Vigilance seems warranted. The "ZOMG we all gonna die!" going on does not.

But it sure does get ratings and score political points.

Edit: I have been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ to view graphs and tables of the coronavirus data chopped a bunch of different ways. They list sources for all of it, though I haven't vetted the sources.

One of their charts shows a breakdown of closed cases into % cured and % dead. That is currently at 92%/8%, with the recovery rate continually improving, but flattening out. That graph makes it look like the mortality rate may end up higher than 2% -- but still probably not radically so, and we really are extrapolating from very little data.

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

#99

Post by tinza123 »

FooHentai wrote: post #20
tinza123 wrote: post #12

Containing it? It's hopeless. Just cancel earlier so the economic loss can be contained.

Containment is still desirable even in a scenario where this has spread to all countries and on-track to become endemic. Why? Because it buys time. If a vaccine can be developed, which is likely but certain to take some months, then you can inoculate the populace and end up in a situation where it's endemic-but-managed. If you don't contain, however, then you assuredly burn through whatever portion of your populace w…

Not just development of the vaccine, you will need to perform sufficient clinic testing, get it approved by FDA or equivalent in other countries, and most difficult, get it mass produced. In addition, treatment would be a entirely different story.

I agree it should be contained, I just don't see it can be contained to an extent where the Olympic Games can still proceed as planned.

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

#100

Post by Johnny555 »

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 prepper contingent has been on pretty much every possible end of the world as we know it scenario, so it's kind of hard to say that they were "on this"
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