Live data from Hacker News

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

axios.com

621–630 of 840 posts

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

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your thoughts echo mine very closely. Uncontained spread seems fairly well unavoidable at this point. By all accounts, the Chinese have so far done a good job of containing the spread inside their borders (outside of Wuhan). But I feel there's a significant lesson to be learned from how the virus exited Wuhan in the first place: containment measures applied too late, after the scale of the problem became too obvious…

The strong expectation for free untracked movement is no different between eu countries and us states - though I think our geographical distribution of population is indeed different. I'm from Spain, and as soon as I saw people tested positive in Italy I knew we were going to fall too. Sure enough, we quickly had some cases in the canary islands and now it's already in the mainland, in my city (Madrid). The differenc…

> as soon as I saw people tested positive in Italy I knew we were going to fall too.

And transport connections between Northern Italy and Spain are worse than the ones with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany.

The cat is basically out of the bag. The question now is if we can keep it subdued enough to reach the warmer season, when it might stop on its own like SARS did and/or make it easier for people to develop antibodies.

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

#622
post #288
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s ample evidence “going to church” is one way, and that’s not much different than the others.

Maybe participation in the holy communion by drinking from a cup of wine shared with the entire congregation isn't the best idea right now.

Afaik none of the churches where it has spread were the sort that has that kind of a practice — more pentecostal or cults. (Cults who knows, they could do that. But pentecostals ime don't much like wine and I've never participated a recreation of the last supper when I've been to a pentecostal church.)

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

#623

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.

But MERS had a very high case fatality rate of about 34%.

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

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing with Italy. They're the first Western country to get a major outbreak. They're being told to do things and assuming that it will stop the virus. But the truth is, containment does not actually stop the virus. It simply slows it. When or if this hits the US or elsewhere in Europe, and it becomes obvious that despite the quarantine in Italy, the virus still continued to spread, they will question the m…

>In China when the government tells its citizens to do something, they just do it. They don't ask why. They don't deliberate on whether it's the correct choice. They simply follow the directions. In the West, everything is up for debate. People don't like to be told what to do. this is immensely racist btw

Probably. Is it accurate?

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

#625
post #472
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, it's from Koltsovo Why do you think it comes from Koltsovo, in Russia?

There was an explosion at a virology lab in Koltsovo in September last year. There were no reported infections as a result and no apparent cases of Coronavirus or anything like it in the area or any established link with Wuhan, but apparently actual evidence isn't required for some people to come to all sorts of conclusions.

So, if we will test all workers in Vector, then we will find nobody with antibodies for corona-virus, right?

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

#626
post #351

The significance of the 2020 Olympic games cannot be overstated. All of Japan has been preparing for this for far more than a decade. Just look at stuff from early 2010s regarding topic such as 8K TV and 5G networks. They have been working towards this singular event where Tokyo will be center at the world stage. It would be tragic (but understandable) to see it cancelled. I hope they can do it a year later instead o…

I don't understand why would they care so much about it... it doesn't really matter.

Sounds like you've never been to a dinner party.

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

#627
post #59
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…

If it's inactivated at only 30 degrees (86F), that suggests an unconventional combat strategy of just heating buildings to that temperature—that's basically a hot summer day. We're not talking an autoclave here.

Good luck convincing a landlord to heat a building to 86 degrees in the wintertime, and then convincing tenants not to turn on the AC.

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

#628
post #600
post #538

Coronavirus will burn itself out in May when temperatures rise. Just like common flu virus, increasing sunlight and humidity will stop the spread of the virus during summer. Source: professor John Nicholls a clinical professor in pathology at the University of Hong Kong and expert on coronaviruses had a conference call where he explained most likely outcome. transcript here: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTii…

transmission curves for MERS and SARS are looking scary. We're still Feb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

Actually the curve for SARS supports decline in hot sunny seasons.

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

#629
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing with Italy. They're the first Western country to get a major outbreak. They're being told to do things and assuming that it will stop the virus. But the truth is, containment does not actually stop the virus. It simply slows it. When or if this hits the US or elsewhere in Europe, and it becomes obvious that despite the quarantine in Italy, the virus still continued to spread, they will question the m…

> Here's the thing with Italy. They're the first Western country to get a major outbreak. Here is the other thing with Italy: differently from other neighbor countries, they have been testing people without symptoms. Numbers: until February the 24th, Italy performed ~8500 tests (mostly on people without symptoms, but that were in contact with confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected patients), while UK did ~6500 (focused on peo…

> until February the 24th, Italy performed ~8500 tests

How is this relevant? For all we know, they might have only tested 200 people by 22nd, when the panic (quarantine, news) first started.

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this figure keeps getting quoted. Out of cases that have been fully resolved we're now at an 8% mortality rate. 2% is counting ongoing cases, that's not the figure you should be looking at.

Because the 8% mortality rate is based on resolved cases, and it generally takes people longer to fully recover than it does to die, so it is skewed upwards. A couple of weeks ago, the same mortality figure was near 30%, because most people with the disease who were not going to die hadn't had time to recover yet. Things are still early enough that the 8% figure will continue to go down. Additionally, it is widely ac…

Thanks.
Post reply on HN