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Facebook Cancels May F8 Developer Conference Due to Coronavirus: What Does That Mean for WWDC?

Even if Apple chooses to cancel WWDC I don't think it'd impact developers much. Not every developer gets to attend WWDC anyway and the session videos are all available to stream. Sure, the labs might be useful but it's not like developers wouldn't know how to use the latest technologies well unless they attend a lab in person. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple chose to livestream the keynote and upload pre-recorded or live-stream session videos.
 
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Rychiar said:
holy media hype wtf. this is less serious than the flu and we're talking cancelling stuff in may... unreal
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WTH, seriously? Do you even live in East Asia? Your comment proves that you are an ignorant person who knows nothing about this infection all over the world.
 
unobtainium said:
I'm using the best most recent data out of China, where the disease has been spreading since December. Even if that information may be incomplete, it's simply the best information currently available. Everything else is speculation.

The Chinese data show that case fatality rate (the relevant metric here) is 0.4% outside of Hubei province. That's still worse than an average seasonal flu, but it's not the 2.3% figure everyone has been quoting. 2.3% is the case fatality rate for China as a whole, a number that appears to have been skewed by the very bad situation in Hubei, where the healthcare system basically collapsed in the face of an unexpected (and at first denied) outbreak. The situation elsewhere is more likely to be much more like the situation in other Chinese provinces, where case fatality rate has been 0.4%.
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The case fatality rate outside Hubei is meaningless if containment has only just started to fail and it can take up to 6 weeks to die from SARS-Cov-2.

We know for CERTAIN that many more of the ~20% of cases that are currently hospitalized will go on to die. It doesn’t kill people right away. You can’t count them as part of the group who won’t die.

So the mortality rate is much higher than the 2.3% figure.

And don’t assume for one second that other regions won’t suffer similar mortality rates (or higher), when 20% of cases get hospitalized and medical resources get stretched beyond their limits.
 
Even if it's not cancelled, who in their right mind would want to go to WWDC this year? Everyone is packed in like sardines - One person sneezes and there will be a stampede for the exits. Way too risky.
 
Means nothing for WWDC, it's too far out to know.

March Madness will probably be the first BIG event here INSIDE the States that's impacted !

Selection Sunday is March 15th, & the first games start shortly after.
 
whoknows2597 said:
Close to 3,000 deaths worldwide in a span of a few weeks. Cases are already popping up in Italy, Brazil, and the US, to name a few. It’s funny how you don’t care about that, yet as soon as it happens in your neighborhood, you’ll be the first to complain how you’re not getting assistance to handle this crisis.
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Upvoted for you being spot on, and also the NFR profile pic.
 
MrTemple said:
The case fatality rate outside Hubei is meaningless if containment has only just started to fail and it can take up to 6 weeks to die from SARS-Cov-2.

We know for CERTAIN that many more of the ~20% of cases that are currently hospitalized will go on to die. It doesn’t kill people right away. You can’t count them as part of the group who haven’t died.
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Do we know that for all-caps certain? About 8,300 people in China are reported to remain in serious or critical condition, while the number of daily deaths in China is reported to have fallen sharply to a few dozen per day. That leaves quite a lot of ground to make up in 6 weeks if a sizable share of that population is apparently going to die.

China had the unlucky draw of effectively being the guinea pig in learning how to treat those infected with this brand-new virus, which is especially bad given the very high population density in its populated areas. It’s really a perfect storm for explosive growth in cases. Cases were also extremely focused in Hubei, which saw immense chaos in its health care system as there was an influx of patients. As the virus spreads, most other countries are going to be far more prepared to tackle it.
 
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jonblatho said:
Do we know that for all-caps certain? About 8,300 people in China are reported to remain in serious or critical condition, while the number of daily deaths in China is reported to have fallen sharply to a few dozen per day. That leaves quite a lot of ground to make up in 6 weeks if a sizable share of that population is apparently going to die.

China had the unlucky draw of effectively being the guinea pig in learning how to treat those infected with this brand-new virus, which is especially bad given the very high population density in its populated areas. It’s really a perfect storm for explosive growth in cases. Cases were also extremely focused in Hubei, which saw immense chaos in its health care system as there was an influx of patients. As the virus spreads, most other countries are going to be far more prepared to tackle it.
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We absolutely know that people who have only had SARS-Cov-2 for a few weeks are not out of the woods.

Take China's figures with a large grain of salt.

Look at Italy's reported figures. 650 cases, 45 have recovered, 17 have died.
 
MrTemple said:
We absolutely know that people who have only had SARS-Cov-2 for a few weeks are not out of the woods.

Take China's figures with a large grain of salt.

Look at Italy's reported figures. 650 cases, 45 have recovered, 17 have died.
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You’re trying to translate too much between two countries in wildly different stages of a virus outbreak. While China’s numbers have its number of active cases dwindling, Italy’s in the early stages of its outbreak; the number of cases is probably strongly focused toward symptomatic and especially the worse symptomatic cases. As of now, Italy doesn’t even intend on testing people going forward who may have been exposed but are not showing symptoms. With time, the fatality rate will probably be lower than what it is based on those highly fluid numbers in the early stages, and almost certainly lower than the 5% you quoted from God-knows-where earlier.

As for China’s numbers, unless and until I see hard numbers from an external, reliable source, rather than aimless speculation that it’s far worse than China’s numbers show, I’m going with the best (essentially only) data available for the country that has had nearly 95% of the confirmed cases up to this point. Would I love for there to be independent data out of China? Sure! But there’s not, and I’m not about to start pulling numbers out of a hat.
 
jonblatho said:
You’re trying to translate too much between two countries in wildly different stages of a virus outbreak. While China’s numbers have its number of active cases dwindling, Italy’s in the early stages of its outbreak; the number of cases is probably strongly focused toward symptomatic and especially the worse symptomatic cases. As of now, Italy doesn’t even intend on testing people going forward who may have been exposed but are not showing symptoms. With time, the fatality rate will probably be lower than what it is based on those highly fluid numbers in the early stages, and almost certainly lower than the 5% you quoted from God-knows-where earlier.

As for China’s numbers, unless and until I see hard numbers from an external, reliable source, rather than aimless speculation that it’s far worse than China’s numbers show, I’m going with the best (essentially only) data available for the country that has had nearly 95% of the confirmed cases up to this point. Would I love for there to be independent data out of China? Sure! But there’s not, and I’m not about to start pulling numbers out of a hat.
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All the figures are for symptomatic cases.

Especially in China where there are confirmed reports of people with non-severe cases being turned away from overrun hospitals, and not being tested at all. Plenty of anecdotal reports from medical professionals willing to risk violating the information quarantine that loads more of those untested are dying and NOT being added to the reported figures.

You cannot discount the figures from Italy, where the medical system is fully functional, yet a startlingly high number of cases have died. And an almost equally startlingly low number have recovered.
 
Flu may be killing more people now, but the rate isn't increasing. Covid-19 is killing fewer now, but increasing quickly. And the figures are far from completely reliable, partly because not enough is known as it is too new. But they do point to something likely having a death rate 10x higher, maybe more, and a much higher rate of passing it on (figures show 2.2 infected by each patient versus 1.3 for flu, some are pointing much higher).

It is much better to be safe now than having to take extreme measures later. Tens of millions are under the harshest measures where only one member of each family is allowed out every three days to stock up. Can you imagine Americans accepting that? The same goes for many countries.

The Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 gives a stark warning. An estimated 27% of the world population were infected, with possibly a tenth of those dying (maybe many more). The first countries to get infected (Germany, UK, France, USA) minimised reports to stop spreading fear. Spain were the first to report responsibly, hence the name Spanish Flu as people thought it hit harder there. It killed more people than the First World War that it overlapped the end of. The spread was helped by soldiers returning home. We have a far more mobile population now.

Spanish Flu wasn't killing lots of people at first. Viruses don't work like that.
 
MrTemple said:
Especially in China where there are confirmed reports of people with non-severe cases being turned away from overrun hospitals, and not being tested at all. Plenty of anecdotal reports from medical professionals willing to risk violating the information quarantine that loads more of those untested are dying and NOT being added to the reported figures.
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Was I unclear about “hard numbers”?

MrTemple said:
You cannot discount the figures from Italy
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Yes, I can, and wait to form a clearer judgment not driven by panic.
 
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Maybe everyone in the planet should just stop going to work, all kids stop going to school, all stores shut down, for 4 months.... and that might finally stop the spread of the novel coronavirus? :rolleyes:
 
Tzuten said:
We're talking 61 or so cases, with 0 deaths in the US. This is being way overhyped. The mortality rate of the common yearly flu strains rivals that of the coronavirus. The media loves to stir the pot... RATINGS.
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You are way off base, look at the global impact which why the market is way down. We are currently monitoring 8400 people in California.
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Solomani said:
Maybe everyone in the planet should just stop going to work, all kids stop going to school, all stores shut down, for 4 months.... and that might finally stop the spread of the novel coronavirus? :rolleyes:
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All schools in Japan will be close till April, may other countries doing the same. South Korea is testing over 200,000 people, we are testing 445!
 
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Plutonius said:
The problem is that nobody really knows how bad it is. (except perhaps China who is very secretive about it).
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Not even China truly knows how bad it is. We won't know how bad it is except in hindsight years later after all the data and studies have been combed through. I think it was H1N1 "Swine Flu" that was initially thought to have an extremely high fatality rate, but the discovery of mild cases brought the number down to something like the 1-2% that's estimated of CoV-19. In the following years, further study and detection of people who had recovered from H1N1 resulted in the fatality rate being brought down to the level of an extremely bad flu year.

Hopefully by the time this is all said and done, it will simply amount to one of the worst "historical flu" years, but if there's even a chance it's in the 1-2% range and it's allowed to spread, then the number of total deaths in the world is likely to eclipse the estimated 50 million who were killed by the 1918 flu.

*THAT* is why countries around the world appear to be trying to kill a fly with a sledgehammer. Even if it can't be contained, if it can be slowed, it buys time to develop a vaccine or find effective treatments.
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Tzuten said:
We're talking 61 or so cases, with 0 deaths in the US. This is being way overhyped. The mortality rate of the common yearly flu strains rivals that of the coronavirus. The media loves to stir the pot... RATINGS.
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Have you seen the images that have leaked out of China of how some of the hardest hit hospitals in Wuhan looked?

Hopefully some of China's issues with this is due to gross mismanagement, which might mean the rest of the world fares better, but actual evidence of the severity that has gotten through the censors suggest that this is quite serious and needs to be nipped in the bud.
 
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Allyance said:
You are way off base, look at the global impact which why the market is way down. We are currently monitoring 8400 people in California.
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All schools in Japan will be close till April, may other countries doing the same. South Korea is testing over 200,000 people, we are testing 445!
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And Disneyland Tokyo is closed for 2 weeks
 
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jonblatho said:
As the virus spreads, most other countries are going to be far more prepared to tackle it.
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...until there are more than a dozen or so cases per city. And then all hell is going to break loose because if CoV-19 is highly contagious, the only safe rooms to be treating people in are isolation rooms with negative air pressure and hospitals just don't have a lot of those to go around.

Once you run out of isolation rooms the risk of cross infection and staff infection goes way up and once you start having cross infection you have chaos. US Medical centers are not made to handle a high volume of caseloads like this.

When you see the officially released images out of Wuhan hospitals, you see clinical staff scurring around in isolation wards in full protective gear. When you stumble into some leaked images, what you see looks like it could have come out of a Syrian war zone. There are patient beds jammed into alcoves and people hooked up to oxygen on a cushion laid on the floor.

Those censored Wuhan hospital images are what's freaking out officials around the world. They know it can happen and that nobody anywhere has the capacity to deal with a widespread outbreak of this nature for very long.
 
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guzhogi said:
I'd like that, IF the virtual attendees got a discount. I've never been to WWDC, but it seems like there's a whole to do at WWDC that can't be done virtually. Things networking, the WWDC Bash, etc.
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Well, this would be a great opportunity for Apple to show all developers what the WWDC is about.
And it’s time for Apple to do something nice for their paying developers.
After all, the expense will be significantly reduce, and Apple could write it off when paying their taxes.
 
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