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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

#441

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…

> relatively low-traffic countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka seeing cases very early on

Nepal borders China, and there are lots of Nepali workers in china/ Chinese development projects in Nepal, so this is not very surprising to me.

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

#442

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.

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

#443
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that if doctors had been free to investigate and alert the existence of the disease very early on, it might have been contained to a small number of cases right from the start, and never gained any traction in the population in the first place. The first few weeks of an outbreak are absolutely crucial, and the Chinese authorities actively obstructed efforts to address the issue in that period precisely b…

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.

When you have an initial outbreak, you have a single original source of the incident and no possibility of people outside the area bringing in additional sources of the virus, because the virus hasn't spread outside the area yet. If you contain it locally, you have contained it completely, full stop.

The situation for other countries is completely different. Someone could fly into Japan right now from anywhere in the world carrying the contagion at any time. It was brought into Japan by multiple carriers at different times and different places. You can contain one incoming source, and three more will spring up. It's a completely different problem.

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

#444

For those of you curious about the state of COVID-19 in Japan, I created an open source tracker that has gained a lot of momentum. Source Code: https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/ Tracker: https://covid19japan.com Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257

Thank you, this is very useful. Got a highly anticipated vacation in Tokyo and Kyoto coming up on the 8th and I'm trying to stay calm and reasonable about the risks. Cold, hard data in an easy to read format helps.

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

#446
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a good time to flag HNs self-conceited hive-mind ? Two days ago, HN was full of - 'LOL this is some Alex Jones level conspiracy'. Warnings by Harvard epidemiologists ? No. Virologists ? No. China quarantining half the population ? No. Only the tech 'wizards' from SV, have a monopoly on truth don't you know. The Orwellian censorship that has been unleashed by these idiots will do the world much more harm in th…

I've read a few stories on HN over the last month, and people took it seriously.

I was watching all those stories and I’m pretty sure they were all flagged down pretty quickly. They’d be on page 4 with an upvote / time ratio that should put them in the top few spots on the homepage.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while we're quite literally waiting for the vaccine to be created. The fewer people get infected the next month or two, the better.

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

Because we're already starting trials of one: https://time.com/5790545/first-covid-19-vaccine/

There's a bit of a description there about why this approach is different.

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the SARS outbreak in 2003 was "contained" within that year.

We were able to essentially starve SARS out of new people to infect. It had a 2-7 day incubation period, was not contagious before symptomatic, and spread by bodily fluid (coughing up water droplets, spread by touch to another). COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period, is contagious before you're symptomatic, and is possibly airborne (I haven't heard strong confirmation of that yet, but it's definitely more virulent…

> COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period

I read that it's an extreme outlier. It's mostly 3-6 days.

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

#450

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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