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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

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from what we've seen in Japan and South Korea, that seems to be far from guaranteed. Those countries had all the warnings they needed, and knew much more about the virus than the earlier days, yet they still failed to contain the initially small outbreaks.

How can they have all the warnings they needed if China didn't give them the right info from the start ? That 27 days incubation period got a lot of people infected and becoming carriers. It's like, China had a relatively well defined outbreak center while other countries started with a wide spread invisible web of carriers.

Japan started with a swarm of Chinese visitors during Chinese new year. Hardly an auspicious beginning.

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

#412
post #73
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

SG interiors are ACed to ice age levels though.

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

#413
post #403

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 worry about the coming increase in home working where companies aren't prepared for it. What if this paints a picture of broadly lower productivity for the practice across the tech industry? Could this then be used as evidence against home working more widely for the long term?

Yeah, having been much more productive in a previous remote position, I had thought that I was always more productive working from home. During a recent remote stint in my current position (which is normally onsite), I realized how much company culture and having a dedicated home office (which I don't have set up now) were a part of my productivity.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID-19 is much more powerful than any of these you mentioned before. It is SARS+, less fatal but much more infectious. In a way, it is a very successful virus (in a nightmare scenario), that aspiring to become the next flu. The Chinese scientists had admitted that, we might have to live with this virus from this time forward. It won't go away like SARS-v1. Also to note, fatality rate might seem low, but 20% of ALL…

>Also to note, fatality rate might seem low, but 20% of ALL patients will develop severe lung issue, that is what makes this virus pretty damn dangerous to us. Source?

- 13.8% are severe, developing severe diseases including pneumonia and shortness of breath.

- 4.7% as critical and can include: respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-sympto...

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

#415
post #277
post #233

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I’m in Tokyo and having a very different experience than you, nearly everyone on the trains are wearing masks and all customer facing staff I see now. Someone hit the emergency button on the train a few days ago because someone was coughing without one (there was a PSA asking people not to do that). It’s mostly foreigners I see walking around without masks now, but I agree it’s still ramping up. I honestly don’t see…

on a side note, i have a week of PTO booked in tokyo then a week in kyoto/osaka, leaving friday. do you think its safe to travel?

Just FYI, this evening NHK news announced that most museums, theaters, and art galleries are being asked to close. Most events such as Sumo wrestling tournament are also considering closure. PM has asked all large events to be cancelled.

In my city, not on your itinerary, all elementary and junior high schools are being requested to close. All community volunteer oriented events and classes are being cancelled for whole month of March. All government employees are being asked to wear mask. All events in government buildings being asked to close.

Things are moving rapidly since government came back from long weekend.

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

#416
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID-19 is unlike anything before (in modern times). Especially HIV. You don't catch HIV by boarding the subway, eating in a restaurant, or running a marathon. For most people, avoiding unsafe sex is enough to avoid HIV. But if COVID-19 spreads to their country, people's daily lives will be significantly disrupted. SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika are a little more like COVID-19, except they never propagate that far.

”COVID-19 is unlike anything before” It’s almost exactly like every other respiratory virus, except that the case fatality estimates for old and sick people are higher. There’s nothing mechanistically new about the infections we’re seeing. It’s a pretty bog-standard respiratory virus, in terms of its transmission and overall virulence. ”But if COVID-19 spreads to their country, people's daily lives will be significan…

Being infectious before showing symptoms is quite new. At least I haven’t heard of it before.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Except, of course, in the example given, the two parents won't share any genetic material (coming from different families originally) and neither will the son and his wife.

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

#418
post #382
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to take into account also the asymptomatic people that will never report the disease

Just as the majority of people who catch the flu don't get tested for it, only the serious cases do. So we know covid19 spreads much easier than the flu and is orders of magnitude deadlier than the flu for those that get tested/confirmed compared to those that get tested/confirmed with the flu.

The flu has been around for so long that I would assume we have very reliable estimates of how common it is.

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

#419
post #309
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Given a couple weeks, sure, but by then it will be too late. It may well seem that way in retrospect. Whe…

The authoritarianism is a red herring IMO. The real issue is economic incentives trumping everything else. For example in Japan if you test positive the hospital gets quarantined losing tons of money. In the US, you can end up payong huge medical bills. The fear is the same. The lesson from WW2 should have been that people are all the same when pushed to extremes. This includes the people who make up the communist pa…

This is a thoughtful comment. Don’t see why it’s getting downvoted.

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from what we've seen in Japan and South Korea, that seems to be far from guaranteed. Those countries had all the warnings they needed, and knew much more about the virus than the earlier days, yet they still failed to contain the initially small outbreaks.

How can they have all the warnings they needed if China didn't give them the right info from the start ? That 27 days incubation period got a lot of people infected and becoming carriers. It's like, China had a relatively well defined outbreak center while other countries started with a wide spread invisible web of carriers.

A single cruise ship is about as well defined as targets can get. It’s pretty damn hard to blame anyone else for completely screwing that up.
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