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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

#501

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.

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.

Ebola pretty much requires you to come into contact with someone so obviously ill they're about to die. It's not like SARS, Covid 19 or even MERS. It spreads well mostly due to scepticism of health services.

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

#502
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your first item is just a dumb misunderstanding of basic terminology. Recombinant doesn't necessarily mean man-made. It literally just means anything involving a combination of different DNA, whether that occurs naturally or artificially. The second item is true but completely unrelated. The third item was thoroughly debunked by a hundred real scientists the day it was posted. The paper had never passed peer review,…

He’s probably a Russian bot account, they’re spreading rumors about this all over.

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

#503

Look like things getting out of control, world need to assemble the core team which include world's top virology scientist, pharma company and top AI team and jointly discover the drug in faster way and they open source they works on github or other plateform to invite others people to get involve to make thing on faster and best way

The problem is not discovering the vaccine, it is ensuring it is safe. See the recent Dengue vaccine incident of what can go wrong when new vaccines are rolled out without proper caution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia_controversy

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

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the outbreak started in the USA, would you expect the USA to welcome a team of Chinese Government epidemiologists?

I expect they would be allowed. The US also allows international observers for its elections as well.

And for its justice system. And its infrastructure.

The difference in transparency between China and the US is hard to overstate.

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When it comes to authority and how people comply with the rules, France and Germany are more different than China and the US. How so?

Can't comment on France, and of course it's a generalization, but in Germany people love to follow the rules. Just watch how people cross the road without looking left or right, but obeying only the light. Sometimes other pedestrians will shout at you if you walk across the road when the light isn't green.

I find this (truncated) quote pretty funny and quite an accurate description of French's relationship with rules:

> in England, everything which is not forbidden is allowed, in France, everything is allowed even if it is forbidden

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

#506
Referencing the http://coronavirus-realtime.com/ website, the graph of the number of infections over time is suspiciously non-exponential right now. I think China and the rest of the world are both struggling to collect data on confirmed cases.

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

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect they would be allowed. The US also allows international observers for its elections as well.

The USA is objectively corrupt from the top, have recently removed themselves from non nuclear proliferation and climate treaties .. as a country the message seems clear that USA don't care two shits about the rest of the World. The idea Trump would open his response to an epidemic up to international inspection is just laughable - and I say his, rather than USA government's because that's how things appear to work t…

Trump has not even nearly as much power as you seem to think. We hear about his abuses of power because hearing ”California government implements reforms to reduce carbon emissions, in spite of Trump” doesn’t generate as much emotions as his corrupt practices.

Imagine a Chinese provincial government openly (key word openly) going against the CCP’s wishes. Or a judge, or a prosecutor.

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

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it will be any different in the USA or Europe? Will the governments ban conventions? Close restaurants and bars? Shut down shopping malls? Or will instead, in the interest of "the economy" (ie, money) keep too light a hand on things. Basically I don't expect the west to be able to react to this any better if it gets big. Their populations are uncontrollable (for mostly good reason) but in this par…

> Do you really think it will be any different in the USA or Europe? Will the governments ban conventions? Close restaurants and bars? Shut down shopping malls? Look at Italy right now. > Or will instead, in the interest of "the economy" (ie, money) keep too light a hand on things. Sure, but this has nothing to do with authoritarian states vs democracy. You'll find a ton of authoritarian states doing exactly the same…

> I'm French, and we've been lucky so far, but I expect chaos when it's going to start. The government has long lost all political legitimity here, and people absolutely distrust them, so I don't think they will not peacefully comply to government attempt to limit the propagation.

Lot of French follows the rules. They will complain (a lot!) about and break them here or there but I expect most real French to mostly follow official orders.

In the other hand, I will totally bet on the fact that the kind people that loot trains after accident or shops after World Cup victory and attack both firefighters and policemen on a daily basis will do the same if there are confinement measures.

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

#510

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…

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