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Comment by downerending | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

What is the harm caused by MWC being cancelled?

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.

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.

> 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.

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...

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.

This is one primary reason why I'm not a fan of the hit air blowers to dry hands (rather than paper towels).

Apparently they're also good for blowing bacteria around the room. But at least we're saving the planet. Hooray.

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.

> Only 6% of visitors were going to be from China, and less were expected much less due to the COVD-19.

Holding MWC without Huawei, ZTE, BBK, Xiaomi and co. is pretty much meaningless

Also, maybe MWC just isn't interesting enough to be worth it?

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

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_coronavi...

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.

Not sure of attenuation since according to the Wikipedia page they are now excluding asymptomatic infections from the statistics, which lowers the number of confirmed.

The Wikipedia page says:

"On 6 February, the Chinese National Health Commission started to change how cases were reported – asymptomatic carriers, who tested positive for the virus but did not show clinical symptoms, would no longer be included in the number of confirmed cases. This had the effect of reducing the total number of cases reported, but also meant that potentially contagious individuals were ignored in reports."

Oh my. That's one way to get the numbers looking better.

I think the reporting criteria changed again. Now it’s based on CT/other clinical symptoms and the number increased 15000+ In a single day!

These numbers come from an overwhelmed, propagandist third-world authoritarian government.

It is surprising to me that anyone would simply accept them as fact.

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.

EDIT: Hubei Province added 14,840 new cases today, my earlier analysis isn't right anymore. I've left it below.

Infected case growth 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 infection clusters are growing exponentially.

https://i.imgur.com/lQcyqAX.jpg

Even if the net case growth rate is decreasing, the situation is less under control than ever before. Look at China's actions; they're past containment methods and now acting on mitigation.

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