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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

#211

Post by rixrax »

lisper wrote: post #158
nostromo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reflecting on how many novel pandemics a 40 year old person has experienced in their lifetime. HIV, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, COVID-19... For some reason it feels like a "only in the history books" event -- and yet it's actually quite common. The average-aged American (38) has lived through multiple epidemics -- including one that has killed 30 million people (HIV) -- and yet we barely talk about it.

Seasonal flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year and we barely talk about that.

Yes it does. After we have vaccinated vast amounts of global population with flu vaccines that mostly work. Try flu without vaccination and potentially 10x mortality rate: CoVid-19.

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

#212

Post by jmnicolas »

PopePompus wrote: post #97
jakeinspace wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

They need a minimum of 18 months (assuming perfect conditions) to be able to commercialize a vaccine.

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

#213

Post by hnick »

tenpies wrote: post #94
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 parti…

Do we know how many of those 20% would die without hospital support? I assume the 2-5% takes into account treatment or is that excluding it?

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

#214

Post by tempsy »

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…

Guarantee US will suffer unnecessarily from all this because, even if a vaccine is found, we likely have the highest per capita rate of anti-vaxxers of any country who will refuse to be vaccinated

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

#215

Post by oefrha »

didericis wrote: post #196
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…

> I think when this all comes to an end, China will be one of the countries that dealt with the virus the best. Countries without authoritarian governments likely don't have the means to effectively quarantine major cities and shut down massive portions of their economy immediately without major problems arising. China's authoritarian government is largely responsible for the severity of the initial outbreak. Their e…

> Last time I checked they were still barring members of the CDC from going into China to help asses the situation.

I checked and the WHO team led by a Canadian epidemiologist has been working in China for more than two weeks, since Feb 10.

I fail to see why they are obligated to allow in a team from a nation that’s been openly hostile for a long time just because they asked and used the word “help”. Sounds like arrogance to me.

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

#216

Post by Leherenn »

vanniv wrote: post #98
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…

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 fat…

Not that I disagree with your post, but I would expect the average cruise goer to be older than the general population.

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

#217

Post by mlang23 »

dx034 wrote: post #148
mlang23 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't count on the EU doing anything other then slow talk. They are definitely not going to close any borders. At least I would be very surprised if they did.

Not the EU as an institution but single countries. I wouldn't be surprised if Austria closes their border if there are more cases in Northern Italy. Germany, Switzerland and France could also follow. I believe they'd still let freight through (maybe with tests for drivers) to not hurt the economy too much. Ironically, the refugee situation a few years back helped those countries as they now have the infrastructure to…

Tourism, in all directions, is too important a factor that closing up borders is really on the table right now. Austria for instance, where I come from, will definitely NOT close the borders to Italy in the upcoming days. And in my personal opinion, there is really no reason to panic because of a media-hyped flu outbreak.

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

#218

Post by shadowprofile77 »

rococode wrote: post #104
baxtr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here's one of the higher-profile examples: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-kills-chinese-film-... > Chang's father, mother and sister also died from the disease, Chinese financial news outlet Caixin reported. His father first exhibited symptoms of the coronavirus on January 25, but was turned away at hospitals because of a lack of beds, leaving him to fight the disease at home. He died days later, followed b…

Completely speculating here but this specific case sounds like a bad luck situation in which the family in question had an extreme genetic susceptibility to suffering the virus at its worst. As other comments have pointed out (and the data so far seems to back) the vast majority 81%+ of cases are fairly mild or even asymptomatic and the elderly are those who suffer the higher 2%+ mortality rates (based on what I've read, the mortality rate adjusted for younger age groups is roughly 0.2% or less.)

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

#219

Post by irq11 »

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…

Pretty much any halfway rational response on a covid thread is downvoted by the same handful of people. Don’t take it personally.

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

#220

Post by john_minsk »

netheril96 wrote: post #204

Every time COVID-19 comes up people talk about the "low" mortality rate. But that hinges on enough medical resources. This disease quickly drains medical resources due to so many becoming critically ill. Without effective containment, a country will see their medical resources exhausted, and then the mortality rate won't be 2% ~ 5%. Exactly how high that will be remains to be seen.

~20% of cases are severe and require advanced medical support. I guess it is a good approximation of death rate without medical support.
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