Coronavirus information and extenuating circumstances policy | Hacker News Reader

Coronavirus information and extenuating circumstances policy

airbnb.com

Airbnb, and others, cancellation policies will be a major reason for the spread of this virus. The sunk cost fallacy is alive and well here, people don't want to lose money just because they feel sick even though they know they shouldn't go when not feeling well. I think at this time the travel industry needs to stand up and relax it's policies even further.

Airbnb will not refund you a stay unless your flight has been cancelled by the airline. Unfortunately the airlines are giving options right now, Delta for example let's you rebook or get refunds to some countries that are trying to shut down this virus at it's source. But not feeling safe, along with being given a refund on a nonrefundable ticket does not matter to Airbnb at all. My recommendation is if you have to travel in the next three months to somewhere in Asia or the Mediterranean is to make sure your booking is fully refundable or get in contact with your host prior to booking and see how leniant they are.

If you thought you could get trip insurance to cover the risk you are also going to be in trouble. Your trip insurance will not cover pandemics, read the fine print.

I heard from somebody the other day that he would not cancel his trip to Japan under any circumstance unless he was fully refunded for his 500CHF JR pass and 1,200CHF flight, or the flight was cancelled. It mystified me, as somebody who has been penniless before, it still strikes me as beyond stupid.

Can't overemphasised. The fine print of the travel insurance is very important!

However, I don't get why cancellation policies will be a major reason of the spread. Your explanation on sunk cost fallacy and cancellation seems to be missing. Airbnb has a clause to refund under "Epidemic disease or illness"

The link says you can only automatically cancel for mainland china and korean trips.

So any trips to Italy, Iran, Washington State etc can’t be refunded. It encourages people to still go.

Sunk cost fallacy: people might not take a free trip to italy now, but they may go if they previously paid for one.

If I were a billionaire I'd tell these people, "Fine, I'll refund you out of my pocket, stay home and don't be an infection vector!". Obviously I'd make them sign a contract to make sure they stay home (or the contract would stipulate that they'd have to pay me back, plus a punishment on top).

I would be surprised if Airbnb does business in Iran...

You don’t need Airbnb in Iran. Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free..

You only need to book somewhere to stay for downtime/private time.

>Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free..

Wait what? Is there more to this?

Iranians are very nice and friendly people is my guess.

They've been under US embargo for decades. In the US, Blacks historically couldn't use commercial hotels which were Whites only. They had to arrange to stay at private homes to travel.

I imagine it's sort of akin to that.

Actually you’re right, they don’t do Iran.

Ticket prices are getting lower to Italy, and I see more and more articles that this is the best time to go to vacation because it's so cheap. People don't care about spreading the virus, because they don't care about other people.

The only way to be protected is to stay home and not follow the herd.

I'm not sure that qualifies as a sunk cost fallacy. Most people have limited budgets for vacations. If they already booked a trip to someplace and cancel it without a refund, they may not be able to afford going somewhere else. On the other hand, if they haven't booked anything they can go somewhere that's of perceived lower risk or just hold off for the time being.

OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do, simply telling people won't change their decision-making. Should we spend public health funds on cancellations? Should we also fund people with non-salaried jobs to stay home?

I haven't worked through the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if these were among the highest-efficiency ways to spend government emergency health funds, especially in the early days before a vaccine has been developed.

I'm guessing spending them on tracking the people infected, tracing down other people who might've been infected, helping enact quarantines, etc, is a far better use of funds than helping people cancel reservations on the off chance they are infected.

> OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do,

Also, huh? I think more people in this society think that "money is the root of all evil" than what you're suggesting.

The major reason is far too many people exhibit an exaggerated state of self entitlement which they use to excuse their actions including those which put others at risk. Some will do it just to spite others, some will do it out ignorance. We just have so many people who have the means to travel that you cannot properly contain any outbreak so you do the best to mitigate the impact

The end result usually is the same, someone else will pay. Which means business big and small for which some litigant finds a twist which a jury is sympathetic to.

I know a few ppl that are saying the flight can’t be refunded and just be pretty ignorant about everything around

I think you mean corporations display an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement, and by not making full refunds easy and well-understood, they create these negative externalities.

Asking individuals to bear the financial risk related to these types of emergencies seems wrong to me on all levels, moral, pragmatism, effectiveness, social fairness, etc.

These types of risks should be borne by corporations in the form of strictly less profit for executives and shareholders. Not by raising prices, not by cutting staff, not by reducing employee benefits. These are risks that have to absorbed by classes of people with extreme financial reserves to cushion the blow, not by classes of people without those means.

Corporations are people. Not just legally people, which they are, but in plain fact they are legal fictions which are wrapped around the actions of people.

I don't understand why people have such a hard time with that.

If Airbnb cancels the reservation, the person renting out the room has an empty room and doesn't get paid. The housekeeper they hire to clean up after each guest doesn't get hired. The guy in the sandwich cart the guest would have bought from doesn't get paid. The corporation doesn't make a profit from the transaction (that was the one we're supposed to want, right?), but that wasn't most of the price to begin with, and the profits go to "shareholders" which are mostly the retirement accounts of ordinary people.

They should cancel it anyway.

Agree with you although it’s a very, very unpopular opinion in North America where most HN readers are from.

AirBnB is probably not the best example given that the cost of last minute cancellations is mostly borne by the people renting out their places (some of which are admittedly full-time businesses) rather than AirBnB itself.

The costs of the cancellations may exceed the profits of the company (In which case it's still appropriate for investors to take the loss, I'm just pointing out that there's a wider range of possibilities).

Or the pricing of refundable tickets vs non-refundable tickets. It turns out if you agree to take on the risk of cancellation, most corporations are willing to give you a lower price on the ticket. Constraining the conditions that they can factor into non-refundable tickets will impact prices, so you can't just ignore consumer behavior, which for things like airplane tickets is to pay as little as possible...

There are some kinds of trips where there's no real option to book in a way that you can cancel a week before the trip. But, by and large, you can book flexibly if you're willing to pay the premium. I'm not sure it's usually worth it in the case of airline tickets given that flexible tickets are often 2x and you can usually cancel for a $250 or so fee. But hotels usually have flexible rates for a 10% to 20% upcharge. That's what I usually do anyway (it's work travel policy) and it's certainly what I'm doing over the coming months.

> “ It turns out if you agree to take on the risk of cancellation”

This is a common fallacy that we can use the pricing mechanism to account for the risk. But whether it’s food poisoning (cheaper prices for expired goods), labor externalities (cheaper prices for goods made with slave / child / exploitative labor), or geopolitical risks (cheaper prices for travel that can be cancelled for reasons that regular citizens simply cannot adequately prepare for), across the board it’s a failed idea.

The information asymmetries and burdens are simply too lopsided against regular consumers. Pricing as information aggregation (thus reflecting correct understanding of risks impounded in prices) is not a thing. It is theorized but fails to exist.

And risks of insolvency are far worse for individuals than for corporations, on multiple levels.

I'm not suggesting the pricing mechanism can be used to fully account for the risk, I'm suggesting that it isn't simply a matter of banning certain contractual conditions, that it is prudent to also consider the inevitable increase in prices that will accompany some of those actions. If you are comfortable with the higher prices, fine. As I point out in my other comment, real world behavior suggests a preference for low prices.

I'm not arguing against regulation, I'm arguing for regulation that acknowledges that certain regulations have an obvious impact on pricing.

There's plenty of middle ground. Bed and breakfast regulation could include a provision allowing the government to make public health the higher priority and require refunds during some declared period of time, and let operators set their own terms otherwise.

> “ that it is prudent to also consider the inevitable increase in prices that will accompany some of those actions. If you are comfortable with the higher prices, fine.”

I addressed this in my original comment above. These risks must be borne by shareholders and executives and not passed on to customers or employees.

Price increases to maintain the same level of profitability is inherently predatory. Rather, it’s simply a cost of doing business borne by the corporation and its shareholders. Airline prices are not higher in response to the airlines bearing the cost of cancellation risks. Instead, airline profits taken by executive bonuses, equity, c-suite perks, and shareholder returns are just lower, while prices, wages and benefits remain the same. Any other outcome where the corporation tries to deflect its responsibility to bear that cost without impacting consumers or employees is immoral predatory behavior that must become illegal, like lobbying, deceptive pricing, price gouging, extensive contractual fine print that consumers are not equipped to read or understand, offering consumers tiers of lower pricing that does not include necessary protections, layoffs or benefit cuts to preserve executive compensation hundreds of multiples above average employees, etc.

If this causes a business to fold, it only means they did not have a viable business. Consumers don’t want the product. Figure out how to bear the cost of these risks or else you haven’t got a business.

A hotel speeded up the international outbreak of SARS in 2003.

"The Metropole Hotel hastened the international spread of the 2003 SARS outbreak by the index case infecting visitors from Singapore, Vietnam, Canada as well as local people via close contact with the index case and the environmental contamination. The one-week quarantine of more than 300 guests and staff at the Metropark Hotel during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu exposed gaps in the partnership with the hotel industry. The subsequent guidelines for the hotel industry from the Centre of Health Protection focused largely on the maintenance of hygiene within the hotel premises."

https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...

"This hotel is infamous as ground zero for a SARS ‘super spreader’ in the 2003 outbreak—here’s what happened"

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super...

Shocking to see that sunk cost fallacy and groupthink are driving decision making rather than sound science and medicine.

Here’s a rather ironic example: HIMSS 2020, a conference of ~45000 attendees from 90+ countries is still scheduled to go forward at Orange County Convention Center March 9-13 - even as major participants withdraw from the event.

I was actually blocked by HIMSS PR folks on Twitter for inquiring about their preparedness plan... which is inadequate to say the least. To top it off, HHS Secretary Alex Azar is a keynote speaker, so now it’s also a huge political can of worms.

What sorts of preparations would you consider adequate--other than not holding the event? While some things are being cancelled or postponed, the fact is that there are events and travel still happening more or less as usual around most of the world. People are still taking public transit. People are still going into offices. Sporting events are going on. I honestly have trouble distinguishing most of the events that have been cancelled (outside of Asia) from those that are going on.

For example, there was just a ~45,000 person security conference held in SF last week.

It’s simple: large, non-essential public gatherings need to be cancelled. Especially if they involve substantial travel from attendees.

It’s fiddling while Rome has caught fire to do anything else.

A major physics conference (APS March meeting 2-6 Mar in Denver) has been cancelled with very short (36 hours?) notice - https://twitter.com/APSphysics/status/1233950396093214720 , https://march.aps.org/

Can you please share which major participants have withdrawn from the event? Where might I be able to look that up? Thanks.

Cisco, Intel, Salesforce, and Amazon - reports of more to announce tomorrow.

I'm traveling in Seattle, where as of this morning the health department has confirmed 6 cases of coronavirus of which only one was a recent traveler to China.[0] I would appreciate the ability to cancel a reservation if I feel sick, especially at a reservation with a shared bathroom.

[0] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus

FYI Washington state has declared a state of emergency. Fears are that it's gone communal with hundreds or thousands of estimated infections in the community.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-us-reports-fir...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/world/coronavirus-news.ht...

Let’s not post about fears. The situation in Washington in serious. However, a state of emergency was also declared in Santa Clara County weeks ago -they’re necessary for unlocking funding so local governments can prepare.

Let’s try to keep discussion to facts, not fears.

No. This is relevant.

It was published by the New York Times which is not a hysterical source.

From the linked article:

Washington State has declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus, and researchers who studied two cases there say that the virus may have been spreading for weeks, with the possibility that up to 1,500 people may have been infected.

You’re right. And while I’ve been pointing out to people that panic is never a good response, upon reflection “fear” isn’t the same thing and can actually be a motivator.

I’m taking this situation very seriously fwiw and agree with the assessment that there are a lot more cases than reported, and my personal feeling is that we’re two steps behind here in the US.

>I would appreciate the ability to cancel a reservation if I feel sick

You always have the ability to cancel a reservation. You may just not get refunded.

If you're from Seattle, then the recent research of Trevor Bedford (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) and the Seattle Flu Study group might be relevant - they've posted a quick summary on https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233971278735761409 while there's still the weekend; but in essence they've done genetic analysis of the Covid-19 strains in Washington sate, and it suggests the following worrying things:

1. their analysis (virus mutations / differences in individual patients?) suggests it has been spreading in Washington state for some 6 weeks already;

2. "Our best current expectation is a few hundred current infections" (that's about WA only! not the entire USA) - it's not confirmed and identified cases, but the number suggested by virus variation; it's not like there's 6 patients who have all been "imported" or form a single clear cluster, they have been infected by some patients who have not been identified, have not been isolated, and have been spreading it in the cummunity.

To me the situation in Washington State seems very similar to where Italy was a week ago.

You couldn't be more right. Just wait for the news from kirkland hospital that should be coming out today

Upvoting and boosting:

There is strong evidence that the Seattle area is where Italy was a week ago.

Why add the word "worrying" to your statement - just leave it neutral. No need to make people panic. It only leads to irrational behavior.

For context - what might have happened in WA could actually be a positive spin on the story. It would mean that the virus has been spreading for much longer than anticipated and the number of infected people might be 100x or 1000x the reported number. It's "positive" as it pushes the denominator up quite significantly, which would mean that the fatality rate is much closer to a "normal" Influenza than anything else.

If their profiling turns out to be correct - we're in a "much better situation" than we thought.

Where's the alexa plugin that infers your covid19 status based on the sound of your voice, breathing, coughing and internet queries for medicine and things you can binge watch for a month ?

The WHO wants to know your location

[Earth;Earth]

> things you can binge watch for a month?

this should get you through March :) ...

The Seventh Seal (1957) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/

The Last Man on Earth (1964) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058700/

The Omega Man (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/

The Andromeda Strain (1971) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/

Dawn of the Dead (1978) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/

Outbreak (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/

12 Monkeys (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/

Cabin Fever (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303816/

Resident Evil (2002) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/

28 Days Later (2003) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/

Children of Men (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/

28 Weeks Later (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/

I Am Legend (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/

Blindness (2008) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861689/

Carriers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0806203/

Daybreakers (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433362/

Black Death (2010) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181791/

Contagion (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/

Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4500922/

World War Z (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/

Maggie (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1881002/

Train to Busan (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5700672/

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/

93 Days (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5305246/

Cargo (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3860916/

It Comes At Night (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4695012/

Rabid (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5628902/

The Hot Zone (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4131818/

edit: There is actually a Wikipedia page for the genre (duh!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_viral_out...

Is watching 1 movie/day considered a binge?

Apparently, I've been doing it all wrong.

I remember during the SARS outbreak, one of the most common vectors for mass-contamination was hotel usage.

I'm going to stay away from Hotels and airbnbs for the next 18 months until the vaccine is ready.

I was told we were not successful developing vaccines for any of previous Coronaviruses unfortunately

Have we tried though? How about the old-fashioned techniques of "culture a load of the virus, then either cook it or put it in a nuclear reactor for a bit to kill it, and then inject it into people"?

Yes a lot of effort has gone into developing treatments. The term vaccine is often used in the press to refer to all sorts of different treatments, such as anti-viral drugs. Actual vaccines are tricky, we know a lot about influenzas for example and have a wide variety of the viruses to study and experiment with and understand how to develop vaccines against new strains pretty quickly. There has never been a successful vaccine against Coronavirus family viruses though, they seem a lot harder to target effectively.

We had candidates for SARS but it was contained before trials began.

Coronavirus is generally too mild and there are too many varieties to worry about developing vaccines for them. It's not that they are particularly hard to develop a vaccine for.

According to Bill Gates there are a number of promising vaccine candidates already but won't be in clinical trials until at least June.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19

SARS had vaccine candidates but disappeared before testing was completed. It sounds like candidates are being used as basis for some SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

There have been announcements for vaccine candidates for SARS-CoV-2 entering initial trials. It sounds like the delay for vaccine will be full trials and production and not development.

I don't even have the option to avoid them since dozens of apartments in my building are Airbnb. There's a constant stream of international guests coming through our front doors.

I actually have a respiratory virus right now, and no idea where I picked it up (my doctor isn't worried, so I guess I shouldn't be either).

If you’re in a major city, this is the time to start taking preventative measures. Avoid mass gatherings and public transport if you can.

There are 70 known cases of Coronavirus in the US. Making precautions at this point is reasonable, going to extremes is not.

My suggestion is to prepare for the possibility of major disruption starting 2 to 6 months from now. Avoid non refundable trips etc.

It could have been zero cases if they didn’t start detection, and right now is very limited detection and found 70.

I understand what you are saying about overreacting, but citing 70 current cases is misleading. The current thinking according to a tweet I can’t find is that there is a cluster of at least 300 in Washington.

I’m guessing if the USA was actually testing as much as they should the current count would be closer to 1,000. The fiasco with the returned cruise ship passengers alone could have dramatically spread it.

This thread: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426

Believing 70 "known" cases in the US = 70 existing cases in the US is a fallacy.

The US has had a severe shortage of tests. Scientests estimate there are probably 150 actual cases in Washington State now

We’ll know more as tests are rolled out. But there’s community spread in four states. In a couple weeks American numbers will probably look like South Korea’s now, if not higher. Two weeks about SK had 30 cases. Now almost 4,000.

I generally agree about not going to extremes, but your timeline is way too slow.

https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html There are only 70 known cases because the US has only tested 472 people. Compare this to South Korea which has tested 90k+ people or Italy which has tested 9.5k people. The virus is well spread around the world and you shouldn't base your decisions around the confirmed number of cases.

Where can I find how many people have been tested per country? This seems to be critical information yet I don't find an easy source of information.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/ This is not updated often so it's a few days behind current numbers. But basically it comes from CDC's and health ministries of other countries.

It's only 70 cases because people aren't getting tested.

My approach at this point is to minimize booking things that I can't cancel or that have significant cancellation penalties. It wouldn't surprise me if I end up eating some additional costs for booking things late or last minute fees for cancellations. Not that I was planning to anyway but this is certainly not the year for booking expensive pre-paid trips.

I agree with you. I'd argue that even thousands of cases in the US wouldn't put you at risk (especially if you're young and healthy). However, if we consider that the number of infected people increases tenfold every 10-15 days, and that there already many unreported sick people, we may expect disruptions sooner that 2 to 6 months.

> There are 70 known cases of Coronavirus in the US.

Sure, but “known” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, we know that there are unknown cases and we don't know how many and we know that in at least a couple of places (and it's likely that there are more we don't know about) some of known and therefore almost certainly more of the unknown cases are due to community spread.

> My suggestion is to prepare for the possibility of major disruption starting 2 to 6 months from now.

This is too optimistic. We're currently in the exponential growth phase of this outbreak. Things can change rapidly, much sooner than 2-6 months.

Self-interest aside, it's a moral imperative to do what we can to slow the spread of this outbreak. The mortality rate for COVID19 is highly correlated with overburdening of the healthcare system. I fear the US healthcare system is woefully unprepared.

NY Times now reports estimates of up to 1500 undetected cases in Washington state alone (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/world/coronavirus-news.ht...). Though that is a a rough order-of-magnitude guesstimate based on virus analysis in Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash; however, it's reasonable to say that while there are some 70 confirmed individuals, we have evidence to say that there are much more cases in USA than that, we just haven't found them, and haven't isolated them, so they'll continue spreading the disease.

My suggestion would be to prepare for the possibility of a major disruption in 2 to 6 weeks, not 2 to 6 months, given what we've seen of how fast the number of cases have grown in other countries.

I feel like now is the time to take preventative measures like canceling large gatherings, crowd avoidance, etc. They’ll have more of an effect now than in two weeks.

I also don’t think this is a panicked view point.

To me, if we wait until it’s obvious we need to take steps, we’ll have wasted a lot of firepower, so to speak.

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