[HN Gopher] MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns
___________________________________________________________________
MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 78 points
Date : 2020-02-12 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| clement_b wrote:
| This is a very sad news for the city of Barcelona and for
| everyone involved in organizing or exhibiting. But that was the
| right choice.
|
| I'm wondering what's next to be cancelled.
| ghaff wrote:
| Tons of things have been canceled in APAC generally. MWC was
| arguably at least somewhat unique among shows in the Americas
| and Europe because of the combination of its size, the large
| Chinese presence, and timing. So far other events I'm aware of
| over the next couple of months are still on though, of course,
| that could change.
| ulfw wrote:
| I wonder if there will be an impact on Google i/o and Apple's
| WWDC. Especially when it comes to Asian visitors.
| ghaff wrote:
| Those are quite a ways out and aren't super-large events.
| If those were to end up being impacted, it means a _lot_ of
| travel /events/activities are being impacted.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Olympics are this summer, could be at risk if it hasn't been
| contained by then, especially given the proximity of Japan to
| China/mainland asia.
| echelon wrote:
| Could the Olympics be postponed a year? There's no president
| for this, but if the disease can't be contained, it seems
| prudent.
|
| I was planning on visiting Japan this summer. Now I'm
| somewhat hesitant to do any travel.
| lozaning wrote:
| F1 Chinese GP was announced as being canceled/rescheduled
| today. Interesting that they're canceling events that are
| scheduled that far out, it wasnt supposed to happen until April
| 19th.
| merqurio wrote:
| It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view.
|
| China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan,
| suffer an epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic
| efforts. 99% of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today
| more than 40,000 with a thousand deaths, have been registered in
| China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1% of cases have been
| registered outside China, in 24 countries (including Spain), with
| transmission chains (secondary cases from a first imported case)
| very short so far.
|
| To put things in perspective, although perhaps inaccurate, the
| number of cases of COVID-19 infection in China is less than 3
| cases / 100,000 inhabitants.
|
| The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases
| / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the
| incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1]
|
| Our Health Alerts and Emergencies system works, works as a team
| and the protocols established in the EU apply: detect the case,
| isolate it, treat it and follow all possible contacts. In this
| way, the transmission chain can likely be properly controlled.
|
| There are many things we do not know for sure about this disease,
| but most cases (80%) are mild. Serious cases and mortality (2%)
| will be adjusted downwards safely in the coming weeks, as the
| detection of mild cases increases. There is WHO data that
| indicate that control measures are slowing the epidemic in Hubei
| and better controlling the situation in the rest of China.
|
| [1]:
| http://canalsalut.gencat.cat/web/.content/_Professionals/Vig...
| akiselev wrote:
| From what I understand, the medical community is treating this
| outbreak with such extreme measures because this virus is a
| perfect storm of factors that could lead to a new annual
| disease emerging, just like the flu and cold. It's deadly
| enough to become a major global concern and transmissible
| enough that it can continue spreading via asymptomatic hosts
| and other viral reservoirs between outbreaks. The jury is still
| out on the virus's rate of mutation but other coronaviruses,
| like the ones that cause a tenth of common colds, are known to
| mutate rapidly.
|
| If we fail to stop the spread of the virus now, it may become a
| fact of life with an even higher annual death rate than the
| flu. We've already got plenty of infectious diseases and based
| on the data so far, it's worth extreme measures trying to stop
| it.
| wolco wrote:
| The death rate has been climbing, today it's 2.5%. Which is a
| sign that either the reported cases is much lower than the
| official count or the virus is getting deadlier. From the data
| we have from other countries it looks like the death rate is
| stable/low which points to a huge amount of unreported cases.
|
| What is the death rate for the 360 person flu group?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| And still, there was one super spreader that was linked to 11
| cases:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-...
| Zenst wrote:
| Liability insurance and details like that would of played a
| bigger part. After all, panic spreads far quicker with better
| logistics and vectors than any virus ever will.
| keanzu wrote:
| > panic spreads far quicker with better logistics and vectors
| than any virus
|
| Literally laughed out loud. Take an upvote!
| Darmody wrote:
| From what some people tell me, there's also a political reason
| as there's a lot happening there.
|
| The same companies that rejected to go to Barcelona are
| attenting ISE in Amsterdam. That makes me thing they junt
| needed a reason to pull out of Barcelona.
| erentz wrote:
| > The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360
| cases / 100,000 inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than
| the incidence of COVID-19 infection in China.[1]
|
| We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an
| established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate.
| This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears
| to be a high mortality rate.
|
| If you had to choose between being infected with the flu or
| COVID19 you'd chose the flu because you're about 20 times more
| likely to die from COVID19 based on the data available at the
| moment.
|
| If COVID19 has spread globally and becomes established then it
| will be similar in terms of deaths to the Spanish Flu. Nobody
| wants that and it is perfectly reasonable for people to be
| concerned about wanting to prevent that from happening.
|
| If this does spread into a pandemic then you will be able to
| rightly come back in 24 months and compare the annual total
| deaths from COVID19 to the seasonal flu. Until then it's an
| entirely incorrect comparison.
| merqurio wrote:
| It makes sense total sense to compare, it's another
| respiratory virus, from a family of viruses already known. We
| must not reinvent the wheel when we know the dynamics of
| these viruses and the countermeasures to take.
|
| The key metric that determines whether COVID-19 can establish
| and generate a sustained outbreak is it's ability to
| reproduce, "R", which represents the average number of
| individuals to which each transmitter transmits the virus.
|
| - If "R" is greater than 1, the transmission may become
| sustained; - If "R" is less than 1, then the transmission
| will simply dissipate.
|
| In the current outbreak, it represents an R of 2.2 [1],
| meaning that on average each patient has been spreading
| infection to 2.2 other people.
|
| Only a little bit more than half of the infections should be
| avoided so that R falls below 1. Preventive isolation and the
| measures established by the protocols should be sufficient.
|
| Besides, there is little evidence to suggest the
| presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19
|
| [1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316
| abc-xyz wrote:
| China only had 144 flu-caused deaths in an entire year
| (https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml), meaning the
| Wuhan virus has already killed 7.8 times as many people as the
| flu kills in an entire year throughout China.
| fspeech wrote:
| It's mostly a classification thing. Most who die from
| diseases associated with the flu, like pneumonia, are not
| recorded to have died from the flu.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Hilarious, your source is an article that's criticizing
| China's statistical methods on flu deaths reporting.
|
| From your own source:
|
| "The statistical methods used by the Chinese CDC should be
| revised, as deaths from pneumonia caused by the flu, for
| example, are not counted, the observer said."
|
| If you ignore death by pneumonia, the deaths for coronavirus
| are very low too.
|
| "An analysis led by Chinese scientists published in The
| Lancet Public Health in September 2019 found that there were
| 84,200 to 92,000 flu-related deaths in China each year,
| accounting for 8.2 percent of all deaths from respiratory
| diseases."
|
| Oops.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Right, but there is evidence that China is similarly
| undercounting NCV deaths, with a number of deaths suspected
| to be caused by NCV being recorded as simply pneumonia-
| related deaths.
|
| Worse, we'll never know the true mortality rate of NCV
| because China has been systematically cremating _all_
| persons with pneumonia, fever, or other NCV-related
| symptoms that have died since December.
| inglor wrote:
| Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the
| US and pneumonia kills 45000.
|
| Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't
| spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause
| of death.
|
| CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| Terrorism kills 2 people per year in the U.S. and we spend
| 100s of billions. The difference is large companies make more
| money building weapons than large companies make treating the
| flue (or mental health).
|
| Edit: The point is, it's all about money. There's no rational
| reason to spend so much on terrorism and so little on mental
| health, yet we do.
| downerending wrote:
| Not going to claim that that money is all well-spent, but
| terrorism (and security in general) is a rather different
| problem. A single failure can cost thousands of lives, and
| huge knock-on effects, as we've sadly seen.
| lawlorino wrote:
| I disagree, as I posted elsewhere in this thread these
| annual death rates are drawn from different distributions.
| The annual suicide rate is normally distributed, in other
| words the expected number of deaths will be around the same
| number each year. Terrorism and pandemics are long-tailed
| meaning a non-negligible probability that the rate shoots
| up to something much higher than your quoted two per year.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Suicide is a big problem, buy it's scary in a different way.
| I'm not personally worried about a suicide epidemic, or
| catching suicide from someone.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| And yet there are actually suicide clusters, with people
| essentially "catching it" from their friends or loved ones
| who've committed suicide.
| baddox wrote:
| This seems like equivocation on the meaning of "catching
| it." Isolating yourself so that you either have no close
| relationships or somehow never hear about any suicides
| among your close relationships is a fairly nonsensical
| proposal, and probably wouldn't in fact decrease your
| chances of committing suicide.
| keanzu wrote:
| A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another
| suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about
| either from local knowledge or due to accounts or
| depictions of the original suicide on television and in
| other media.
|
| A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized
| suicide is known as the Werther effect.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide
|
| Unbelievably you are correct. You can "catch it".
| Amazing.
| Razengan wrote:
| Suicide is a symptom of many other problems.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| The flu infects 30,000,000/year and kills 10,000.
|
| Given r0, the Covid-2019 would infect 60,000,000 and kill
| 1,000,000 if unchecked in the US.
| ericb wrote:
| Why not? Because _math_.
|
| This is a contagion. Read about the Spanish Flu. This looks
| to be both more contagious, and more deadly in most of the
| published studies. We hope they are biased and overly
| pessimistic, but whataboutism isn't helpful here.
|
| Your argument is like if the rug in your living room is on
| fire, and you say "why worry about that rug--we should really
| invest in fixing that roof leak." I agree roof leaks are also
| bad.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Here are the CDC burden (upper bound) estimates for the
| 2019-2020 flu season: 30 million infections, 30k deaths. In
| other words, 0.1% of infections are predicted to be fatal,
| which is substantially lower than the current estimates for
| 2019-nCoV.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-
| season-e...
| temporama1 wrote:
| If this virus infects 60% of the world's population, and has
| a death rate of 1%, that's 50 million deaths.
| downerending wrote:
| They're worth effort, but the answer is that the parameters
| area reasonably well known. Suicide isn't increasing
| exponentially, for example.
| lawlorino wrote:
| Exactly this. The expected annual deaths from suicide are
| normally distributed whereas a highly contagious disease is
| long-tailed, i.e. a non-negligible probability of a huge
| number of fatalities.
| endorphone wrote:
| These sorts of comparisons are, I would respectfully argue,
| not very helpful because the various causes of mortality are
| additive, not competing to kill the same victims (generally).
|
| We don't need a perpetual cycle of coronavirus in addition to
| the perpetual cycle of the flu that we already have, in
| addition to suicide and every other cause of death. The
| world's health organizations are trying desperately to
| curtail it before it becomes a norm.
|
| Which is why saying "Oh, why cancel this it's no biggie" is
| just so misled.
|
| If the world was in a situation where we could seriously
| contain and eliminate the flu, we would surely take every
| possible measure to do so.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| How much can we trust the numbers coming out of China who have
| retaliated heavily against whistle blowers including one of the
| original doctors to highlight this crisis, who is now dead?
|
| [1]:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/07/8036804...
| kalipsosu wrote:
| For flu, each sick person infects 1 person. So Ro is 1. This
| means no quarantine needed. But for covid-19 estimated Ro is
| around 2.5. So containing this virus requires quarantine. Also
| this is a novel virus which means this strain is new and may be
| unpredictable. Mutations may occur. We even not sure about
| source of the virus. If it spreads all over the world it could
| logarithmicly grow in number. Especially for undeveloped
| counties with weak healthcare infrastructure pose a real
| threat.
| baddox wrote:
| I'm not a doctor or a public health expert, but it seems to
| be that unqualified uncertainty should not be used as
| justification for _any_ action other than pursuing more
| information to qualify that uncertainty. Otherwise we would
| maximally quarantine any illness for which we are at all
| uncertain of an upper bound on its basic reproduction number
| or mortality.
| kalipsosu wrote:
| I am. The most important factor here is Ro not uncertainty.
| Maybe I should emphasize it more.
| baddox wrote:
| I was replying specifically to when you said "Also this
| is a novel virus which means this strain is new and may
| be unpredictable. Mutations may occur." I interpreted
| that as meaning that because of our lack of knowledge
| about this strain and the fact that it may mutate, some
| unspecified amount of additional concern is warranted.
| retsibsi wrote:
| There are degrees of uncertainty, and ranges of plausible
| severity, even when we haven't actually nailed these down
| quantitatively. We already have enough information about
| COVID-19 to raise it far above the threat level of a random
| virus. And given how quickly and stealthily it seems to be
| capable of spreading, to take no action beyond 'pursuing
| more information' would be almost the same as assuming the
| best possible resolution of our uncertainty. That's no more
| rational than the other extreme of assuming the very worst.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Otherwise we would maximally quarantine any illness for
| which we are at all uncertain of an upper bound on its
| basic reproduction number or mortality._
|
| That is exactly what what health experts try to do with
| diseases with more than incidental mortality rates (i.e.,
| more than a fraction of a percent) that are determined to
| be highly contagious (meaning some form of human-to-human
| transmission).
|
| The goal is to stop a potential catastrophic pandemic
| _before_ it becomes a pandemic, not after it 's too late to
| prevent millions of deaths.
|
| The Japanese cruise ship is the perfect example of _why_ a
| quarantine is important: hundreds of infections, and
| counting. Since the virus has an incubation period of up to
| 2 weeks, many of these people would have been infected
| _before_ the quarantine was imposed. Given the
| international makeup of the passengers, not quarantining
| the ship could have resulted in the spread of NCV to dozens
| of countries.
|
| And as the situation in Wuhan shows, once the disease
| reaches epidemic status, it's too late to prevent most
| deaths as the medical system simply won't have the
| resources to treat the infected. (Contrast that to non-
| Wuhan mortality rates, where the lack of epidemic status
| allows significant medical resources to be devoted to each
| infected patient, resulting in a current global non-China
| mortality rate of below 0.1%.)
| mattrp wrote:
| MWC is a 100,000 person French ski chalet... it makes total
| sense to cancel it. "Show flu" is a thing... so if just the
| booth workers come back through customs with even so much as an
| elevated temperature, it will unnecessarily crowd the
| quarantine facilities for weeks. You may have math on your side
| but you're not winning this one.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I think this is less about MWC or Barcelona having health fears
| and more the domino effect of big exhibitors pulling out. It
| seems a lot of those pulled out because their Chinese
| companies, and presumably impacted by travel restrictions
| meaning they couldn't get key people prepared in advance and
| then out to the event.
|
| Once the big exhibitors pull out you then see attendees doing
| likewise as meetings they were travelling for get cancelled,
| and finally smaller exhibitors deciding it's not worth the
| effort.
| downerending wrote:
| I think people are worried about the unknown unknowns. IIUC,
| it's infectious for a considerable period of time (one or two
| weeks) before the infected person becomes systematic. Plus,
| it's possible that some infectious persons never develop
| symptoms. Also, the case count is still in exponential growth
| mode. Plus, information coming out of China might be
| incomplete.
|
| No idea whether the conference _should_ be cancelled, but it 's
| not an irrational idea. There could be a large number of silent
| cases outside of China already.
| merqurio wrote:
| The MWC was going to be attended by 100,000 people, 75% of
| them from Europe and the US, 10% from Asia-Pacific (excluding
| China) and 9% from the rest of the world. Only 6% of visitors
| were going to be from China, and less were expected much less
| due to the COVD-19.
|
| Can any of them come infected by the COVD-19?
|
| The probability is very low. Almost all of the participants
| will come from areas where the presence of the COVD-19 is nil
| or extremely low.
|
| By comparison, a number of passengers equivalent to three
| times the MWC go through the airports of Atlanta or Los
| Angeles, two times pass through the airports of London, Paris
| or Amsterdam each day, and 1.5 times through Madrid and
| Barcelona each day. And none of them closed so far.
|
| The basic hygiene measures (handwashing, not sneezing or
| coughing to the open) and common sense are more solid and
| effective.
|
| If we follow the same line of thinking (we shouldn't), we
| would have to close all the airports tomorrow.
|
| edit: typo
| electriclove wrote:
| What is the harm caused by MWC being cancelled?
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of money is wasted. Presumably sales at a lot of
| companies take some incremental hit. Some startup that
| planned this as their launch event is screwed. A lot of
| people in Barcelona don't make money they were expecting
| to make. (Other Barcelona residents breathe a sigh of
| relief.) So, yes, there's harm even if the decision was
| probably the rational one.
| berkeleyjunk wrote:
| I work at a startup where we invested quite a bit of time
| and money for this show. It is a big hit for the smaller
| companies since it eats away a large chunk of your
| marketing budget.
| berkeleyjunk wrote:
| I think once the first high profile cancellations (LG,
| Ericsson) came in it was just a matter of time. We were
| prepared to go still but one by one everyone we were
| supposed to meet started canceling. The domino effect of
| the first cancellations doomed the event.
| downerending wrote:
| > where the presence of the COVD-19 is nil or extremely low
|
| I don't think this is known or knowable at the moment.
| Hence the worry.
|
| You are right that airports are probably a greater risk.
| Perhaps they should be closed. On the other hand, that
| would be far more disruptive.
|
| As for basic hygiene, yes, we all should. At the same time,
| we all know that a significant fraction of the population
| can't or won't do this.
|
| Edit: Here's the proper method:
| https://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/
|
| A significant caveat is that the sink/restroom must allow
| proper handwashing. Many lack paper towels, for example. If
| you have to touch the faucet handle or the door after you
| start washing (which takes two minutes), the method has not
| been followed. It's harder than it looks.
| sundvor wrote:
| Yep, keep seeing how people use their freshly washed hand
| to pull open a door.
|
| It only takes one person leaving without washing their
| hands for the irony to be apparent.
| merqurio wrote:
| We have a good understanding of what's happening outside
| mainland China[1], and China seems (surprisingly)
| transparent so far. But it is indeed difficult to trust
| that they have reported 100% of the cases.
|
| [1]: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard
| /index.h...
| Aperocky wrote:
| You're right, except cases are not in exponential growth for
| a period of time already if you've been following closely.
| Right now it's more or less linear
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Just keep in mind that it's been admitted that China is
| strapped for testing kits and turning people away without
| testing them. So it's possible that it only turned linear
| because the number of testing kits available per day is
| linear.
| tristanj wrote:
| Infected case count has slowed down primarily because of
| the quarantine of Hubei province. The virus has up to a two
| week incubation period, and today two weeks later we're
| able to result of this quarantine. Case growth in Hubei has
| slowed down.
|
| The issue now is that every major city in China has local
| infection clusters, and these case counts are growing
| exponentially.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/lQcyqAX.jpg
|
| When you combine these two factors (Hubei case growth
| decreasing, rest of China case growth increasing), the net
| case growth rate appears to be decreasing.
| downerending wrote:
| Hadn't looked for a few days. It does appear to be
| attenuating--hope that holds up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronav
| i...
| Filligree wrote:
| Keep in mind, the right model is a large number of
| overlapping S-curves. The virus may spread like wildfire
| once it's entered a city, but it first has to do so.
|
| Wuhan is nearing the top of its S-curve, while other
| cities are still near the start. As such it would make
| sense for the number of cases to slow down even if it
| isn't actually being stopped.
| retsibsi wrote:
| > Serious cases and mortality (2%) will be adjusted downwards
| safely in the coming weeks, as the detection of mild cases
| increases.
|
| There are factors that could move that number in both
| directions.
|
| Yes, presumably there are many mild cases that haven't been
| counted. But unfortunately coronavirus deaths are probably also
| undercounted -- for example,
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-families-tell-of-pne...
|
| This point I'm not sure about, because it seems bizarre that
| everyone would make such an obvious mistake, but: as far as I
| can tell, the death rate is simply calculated as [current total
| of recorded deaths] / [current total of recorded cases]. But
| when the fatal cases take quite a long time to kill (from what
| I've read, it tends to take a week or so from the onset of
| symptoms for them to become severe, and up to another two weeks
| for death to occur -- see
| https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/reporters-
| notebo...) and the total number of cases is rising
| dramatically, surely that skews the figure toward a significant
| underestimate?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| For example, using the simple methodology, SARS' death rate
| was only about 3%, and that was the number most media used
| during the outbreak. But years after the epidemic ended, once
| researchers had greater access to medical records, the death
| was determined to be 10-15%, or roughly 3-5x higher than
| originally reported.
|
| In the cases of NCV, there is already significant evidence of
| under reporting of fatalities by Chinese authorities in Wuhan
| (some sources suggest that up to 90% of NCV deaths in China
| may be unreported).
|
| And as the cruise ship stuck outside of Japan demonstrates,
| the virus may be far more virulent (i.e., contagious) than
| previously thought.
| Filligree wrote:
| It does, but that's a known factor which all medical
| professionals are aware of. The true number is unknowable
| until the epidemic is over, so they give the best number
| we've got in full knowledge that the numerical value will be
| wrong.
| retsibsi wrote:
| This seems dangerous, if it leads to unwarranted
| complacency among those who take the number seriously. Do
| you know the rationale behind reporting a number known to
| be skewed in this way -- is the idea that it is roughly
| canceled out by other factors (e.g. the number of
| undiagnosed mild cases) that push toward an overestimate?
| ghaff wrote:
| MWC got caught in a tough spot. Lots of companies were pulling
| out. Companies don't like sending employees to events when,
| rationally or not, a lot of families are going to be
| uncomfortable about a family member traveling to a big show
| with a large number of Chinese attendees. And, of course, a lot
| of employees also believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can't
| just say "nope" without consequence.
|
| Many years ago, I remember my company canceling some sales
| event because of, I think, Gulf War I because they didn't want
| to tell European employees in particular to travel to the US
| often on American carriers.
| baq wrote:
| There's just the little problem of trustworthiness of Chinese
| numbers. On one hand you have this reassuring data that dynamic
| of the virus is slowing down, on the other there are serious
| people with good credentials going on record saying this might
| get a lot worse before it gets better. 2% CFR on 60% of world's
| population is not a negligible number.
| bugzz wrote:
| > Only 1% of cases have been registered outside China, in 24
| countries (including Spain), with transmission chains
| (secondary cases from a first imported case) very short so far.
|
| It seems completely unsurprising to me that we aren't seeing
| more cases in other countries so far - almost every country
| with the exception of Singapore are only testing people who
| have been in Hubei (or China, if symptoms are serious).
| Meanwhile Singapore, which actually has been testing more
| people, has been finding more and more locally transmitted
| cases, despite huge efforts tracking down and isolating
| contacts of previous cases.
|
| >Serious cases and mortality (2%) will be adjusted downwards
| safely in the coming weeks, as the detection of mild cases
| increases.
|
| Or it could adjust upward, as it seems to often take 3+ weeks
| to kill. In Singapore 8/50 cases are in critical condition in
| the ICU (And Singapore has detected many mild cases, even
| asymptomatic ones). For the flu in the U.S. it seems about 0.1%
| of cases end up in the ICU, so that's some compelling evidence
| that this is 10-100x as dangerous as the flu. And what happens
| to the fatality rate when we run out of ICU beds, as already
| happens during particularly bad flu seasons?
|
| I'm not saying this _will_ be globally devastating, but I think
| the chance is high enough that I 'm disappointed more extreme
| actions aren't being taken worldwide.
|
| edit: I also assume the case numbers in China outside of Hubei
| have been looking better recently because they also can no
| longer rely on the fact that a sick person has recently been to
| Hubei to know who to test.
| songshuu wrote:
| What's the over/under on SXSW doing the same?
| maa5444 wrote:
| at some point you have to deal with consequences of the choices
| taken by you and for you
| OldOneEye wrote:
| While I feel sorry for the people that put the energy to make
| this happen and also for the people that may lose their jobs this
| month over this, as a native inhabitant of Barcelona, I can only
| celebrate the news, even if it is for this terrible reason.
|
| When MWC is ocurring in Barcelona, public transport (subway) goes
| on strike (because of the maximum impact). But usually this only
| fucks over non MWC attending people, because tickets are so
| expensive that only people which can use a taxi anyway will go,
| greatly diminishing the impact of the strike for attendants while
| making inhabitants lives miserable for that time period.
|
| Also, Barcelona already has a very severe problem of houses being
| rented out to tourists with very high markups, producing a
| gentrification of the city (along with other factors, not only
| the tourism is responsible for this). Events like MWC do not help
| this situation.
|
| BCN is already overloaded with tourism, events like MWC only make
| it worse for those of us that live there.
|
| I'm completely aware that this is not the responsibility of MWC
| organization or tourists, this is a regulation problem. But since
| regulation is stacked against us, I can only get happier that
| this year we won't have to suffer all the inconvenience of the
| event while reaping almost none of the benefit.
| jaynetics wrote:
| Thanks for the local perspective! I get the feeling MWC is a
| bit of a scapegoat here, tough.
|
| > When MWC is ocurring in Barcelona, public transport (subway)
| goes on strike (because of the maximum impact).
|
| So won't they just choose any other date with the next highest
| impact for their strike now? Why is that better?
|
| > BCN is already overloaded with tourism, events like MWC only
| make it worse for those of us that live there.
|
| 100.000 visitors for 4 days, that must be less than 1% of
| Barcelona's hotel nights/year. It's also happening during off-
| season, so shouldn't lead to more housing capacity being taken
| away from the locals.
|
| I get when people complain about the Olympics in their city or
| other costly events with unclear rewards, but this seems pretty
| harmless?
| maa5444 wrote:
| #agree and have you ever asked yourself why no politician
| charges these guys (organizers) so at least locals could take
| something back from it
| justinzollars wrote:
| I just can't understand why the stock market keeps going up.
| testfoobar wrote:
| No clue about the stock market.
|
| But here is some interesting real-time traffic congestion data
| plotted with 2019 averages for cities. Gives a sense of how
| many people are going back to work.
|
| Scroll down and click "Last 7 days"
|
| Notice SF & London are trending with 2019 averages:
|
| SF: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/san-francisco-
| tra...
|
| London: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/london-
| traffic
|
| Then compare:
|
| Wuhan: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/wuhan-traffic
|
| Shanghai: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shanghai-
| traffic
|
| Beijing: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/beijing-
| traffic
|
| Shenzen: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shenzhen-
| traffic
|
| Hong Kong: https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/hong-
| kong-traffic
| [deleted]
| snarf21 wrote:
| Interest rates are negative. This causes people to chase and a
| big factor in this bubble. Companies are borrowing billions for
| free to do stock buybacks and keep the price going straight up.
| Nothing lasts forever. When is the big question.
| echelon wrote:
| Are people trying to get in and out before the crash to make
| a quick buck, or are they long and hope to buy at a position
| cheaper than hypothetical post-recovery prices?
| buboard wrote:
| where would you take your money when interest rates are
| negative?
|
| (also how do you avoid a crash when interest rates stop being
| negative)
| sub7 wrote:
| There's been a grand fiscal policy experiment over the last 12
| years unlike anytime before. It has resulted in __every __asset
| class losing price discovery mechanisms and basically becoming
| untethered from fundamentals.
|
| Nobody knows how this will end, or when. Could be months, could
| be decades.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Because it's not materially affecting American business.
| ct0 wrote:
| Until supply becomes so limited it effects sales.
| unlinked_dll wrote:
| It would affect prices first. The real question mark is if
| it gets bad enough to where people default on their debt
| payments (there's over $13 trillion out there today)
| because the price of basic goods gets too high.
| treebornfrog wrote:
| Apparently zoom has been going up because more people will work
| remotely during this period.
|
| Crazy.
| justinzollars wrote:
| okay. Zoom makes sense.
| meerita wrote:
| As a citizen of Barcelona, I welcome this unspected event. A
| quiet end of winter wihtout thousands of crazy tourists
| collapsing all the services. I hope MWC celebrates in another
| city.
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(page generated 2020-02-12 23:00 UTC)