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

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631–640 of 840 posts

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

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand the masks are utterly useless against this anyway.

The common surgical face masks you'll often see people from Asia wear in public are only useful if YOU have the virus by reducing the chance of people catching the virus from you. There are, however, N95 respirator masks that are useful for protecting the uninfected from catching the virus. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use...

What about catching the infection through the eyes?

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

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why people are assuming we can create a vaccine. There’s no vaccine for any other corona virus.

Human coronaviruses are usually just common cold, so there was no need to make them before.

Maybe we should try having more common colds... In wonder if that would help to create resistance.

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

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US we have an additional problem that 2 weeks of hospitalization means certain bankruptcy for many people (myself included). So it might be rather difficult to get people to voluntarily show up for tests and such.

I mean, if it hits here in a big way something is going to have to happen with this. Whether you're in a hospital for a 2 week quarantine, or laid up in bed for 2 weeks because you're sick -- either way you're going to have 2 weeks where you aren't working. Beyond that, if it REALLY hits here, you're going to have entire businesses shut down temporarily. I saw a CDC estimate that if it goes pandemic, we should expect…

Either way you're going to have 2 weeks where you aren't working, but in one of the ways you also have a $100,000+ bill.

I can survive 2 weeks without work, but I simply can't pay a bill like that no matter what I do.

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

#634

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…

> 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

Hum... If people start dying¹, every country will. Democracy will just help ensure it's not done is a hush...

What leads to my second comment, China can not do it without massive problems immediately arising either. The only thing they can do better is hiding those problems, but you bet there are a lot of people dying there because of the measures the government has taken to stop people fro dying.

1 - That's still an "if". How much of the lethality is caused by bad health care in China? I don't think anybody can answer this question yet.

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

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely nonsensical paranoia. It's the equivalent of making $1000 month one of your startup, $2000 month two, and immediately claiming that by month 24 you will be making over $16 billion. Make no mistake, COVID-19 is likely to become an annual community disease. But it's not going to kill 30 million people until like 2120.

There's nothing nonsensical about it. That's a very poor analogy as well, comparing a startup's growth to the spread of a highly-infectious virus. COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history. If there was no quarantine, you could expect truly exponen…

COVID19 spreads by default. If you leave it alone, it will spread uncontrollably. China went from 0 to 79,000 confirmed cases in 2 months, despite running the largest and most extensive quarantine in human history.

Sure, but note that they started the strict quarantine protocol after there are already > ten thousand ick people (and many more already exposed).

With coronavirus, it's not possible to do this. The reason is that many people are asymptomatic for weeks, while at the same time passing the virus to other people. If you cannot identify infections before they have the chance to spread at a rate of >1, then the spread of the disease will by default be exponentia

This is mostly speculation, maybe just applying basic things like hand washing, distance measures pushes it to <1 and it dies down eventually? Besides, we have no data about the rate of infection from people who does not show any symptoms (especially coughing).

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

#636

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…

This fellow also has been posting a lot of information [in easily digestible format for the non-initiated like myself] on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch

Marc Lipsitch

Infectious disease epidemiologist and microbiologist https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/marc-lipsitch/

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

#637
post #628
post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

both curves do, but we're still at least 2 months away :-(

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

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fo…

"real French" "the kind [of] people that loot trains" As littlestymaar points out, this sounds an awful lot like dog-whistling.

Is he wrong though?

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

#639
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you're angry over not getting a free face mask is a bit disrespectful toward the many people their working their asses off in times like these. my partner is a health care professional and there aren't enough masks for them (this is central Europe btw). but yeah tell me about how hard they work and how I don't appreciate them.

Here in Belgium it's almost impossible to find masks as well, except if you want to pay 70+ EUR https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png I suspect Asian customers have been plundering online EU shops for a while. Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner.

The WHO acts like an advisory board that could have recommended governments to stockpile them before the disease appeared.

Whether they should or not is a different story.

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

#640
post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet is full of quacks. Alarming titles indicate quacks more than they indicate actual crisis and we don't have time to check the credentials and the work of the people involved to assess their credibility. Also facts speak for themselves, you don't need alarmism unless you have something to sell. Also in these instances a general panic can do much more harm than the virus can ever do — we already see fears of an…

There are two morals to the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".

Fine by me, I'm pretty sure that I won't die being eaten by a wolf, stress has a much higher likelihood.
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